The Grosvenor Gallery was the most progressive exhibition space of the Victorian age. The paintings and works of art shown there - by Burne-Jones, Watts, Whistler and a host of other figures associated with the aesthetic movement - challenged artistic convention and were the cause of virulent debate about the means and purpose of modern art, while the very existence of a gallery which attracted so much fashionable attention and which lent such great prestige to the artists who exhibited there served to overthrow the stultifying influence of the contemporary Royal Academy. Christopher Newall's book tells the story of the rise and fall of the Grosvenor Gallery, and his invaluable index of exhibitors, compiled from the now very rare original catalogues, allows the reader to discover which artists showed which works and what they were during the fourteen years of the Grosvenor's summer exhibitions.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, poet, painter, aesthete, founder member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, was one of the most influential British artists to have lived. His extraordinary and obsessive vision was fuelled by the tortured love he felt for three muses: the tragic Lizzy Siddal, into whose coffin Rossetti cast the only manuscript of his poems (only to have her exhumed and the volume retrieved years later); the earthy former sex worker Fanny Cornforth; and Jane Burden, the statuesque wife of his friend William Morris. During the whole of his life Rossetti returned to the three faces, sometimes combining them, in his bid to encapsulate the nature of woman. The portraits he made range from rapid, vivid sketches to careful drawings and fully worked out allegorical paintings. Few artists have so relentlessly followed a particular vision; it is not surprising that Rossetti's haunting and sensual paintings were admired by the Symbolists and Picasso alike. With two essays by the leading scholar of Rossetti, Christopher Newall, and Holburne curator Sylvie Broussine, richly illustrated with 75 images including ravishing details in full page and spreads, this is a magnificent but approachable introduction to the riches and strangeness of Rossetti's art.