Rossetti's paint

[La Bella Nano, 1875]

http://www.delart.org/collections/preraph/la_bella_mano.html

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Rossetti studied oil painting with Holman Hunt. Hunt already had a student, Fred Stephens but Rossetti persuaded him to teach him and Holman Hunt rented an extra single bedroom at the top of the house he was in. Rossetti struggled at first, not having painted in oils before and actually used the oils as though they were watercolours, applying the oils very thinly and using slender brushes. He primed the canvases with white until it was like the paper he was used to and almost inadvertantly he developed a new techniqies of the oils becoming almost transparent.