Magnolia grandiflora
This voluptuous flower-maiden dates from 1885. At first glance you might take her for the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, but he had died three years earlier. His influence is certainly strongly present in this ravishing early work by George Woolliscroft Rhead. George Woolliscroft Rhead, Magnolia grandiflora Etching printed in brown, 1885 George Woolliscroft Rhead was born in North Staffordshire in 1855, into a family with a long association with the Potteries. His father, George Woolliscroft Rhead senior, was a talented pottery designer, and the younger George Woolliscroft Rhead and three of his siblings - Frederick Alfred, Louis John, and Fanny - were all apprenticed at Mintons. When Mintons set up an art pottery studio in Kensington in 1871, under the directorship of W. S. Coleman, George Woolliscroft Rhead moved to London to work there. He then gained a scholarship to study at the South Kensington School of Art. He studied painting under the Pre-Raphaelite artist Ford Madox Brown,