A friend of mine with beautiful crimson hair is considering experimenting with coloring her hair black/dark brown. Through talking with her, I started thinking about how these two hair colors are the two that I personally find most striking and aesthetically appealing, especially in combination with each other...a redhead standing next to a woman with dark hair. Interestingly, a lot of Pre-Raphaelite artists seem to agree with me. The visual appeal of contrasting a woman with dark hair and a woman with fiery hair did not perhaps begin with the Pre-Raphaelites, but they certainly made the combination of the two more famous! A few examples...The above is a detail from Waterhouse's Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May.
Crystal Gazers by Mowbray.
Dream of Fair Women by Harrison
Duet by Dicksee
Bower Meadow by Rossetti
Edward Robert Hughes did a series of two paintings, entitled Day and Night, celebrating the dual beauties of pale and dark. 
and Edmund Blair Leighton created the same painting, Stitching the Standard, two times, the first with a redhead during the mid-day, the second with a brunette during dusk. 
I love all of these. They're so beautiful.
ReplyDelete:o)
How shrewd of you!
ReplyDeleteAs soon as I read your post, I remembered
Anne Shirley and Diana Barry from the Canadian mini-series based on the book Anne of Green Gables.
If you take a look, you'll see what I mean
http://ashp.fotopic.net/p37110610.html
http://ashp.fotopic.net/p37110633.html
http://ashp.fotopic.net/p38918063.html
And the one in the last link reminds me so much of Waterhouse it's insane
http://ashp.fotopic.net/p38918160.html
But the funnies thing is that I first learned about the Pre-Raphaelites and the Lady of Shallot from this show
because in the first episode, at the very beginning, Anne is going through the woods reciting Tennyson's poem!
Ahh Anne of Green Gables! I need to watch and read those again.
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