A Christmas Carol was described by Rossetti’s studio assistant and friend Henry Treffry Dunn in his unpublished papers as: "a maiden in resplendent eastern dress of crimson with a gold thread pattern worked throughout, playing on a stringed instrument whilst she sings 'Hodie Jesu Christus natus est Hallelujah.' Rossetti was a great digger of subjects from Early English Mysteries & I conjecture that he must have unearthed this fancy from such a source." It is one of Rossetti’s earliest of a series of half-length depictions of women in voluminous dresses playing musical instruments.
The connection with female beauty, music, and the fashion for exotic decoration and costume were central themes of the emerging English Aesthetic movement, the revolutionary artistic style of the 1860s and 1870s that combined elements of Renaissance, Oriental, and Classical styles
The model for this painting was Ellen Smith, a poor laundress "discovered" in a Chelsea street by Rossetti in 1863. A Christmas Carol was among Rossetti’s last images of Ellen and the most elaborate of all the depictions of her that he would ever make. The subject seems to have been inspired by an ornate exotic instrument that was part of Rossetti’s collection of curios. It has been identified as a short-necked fiddle, a rabab probably Algerian or Tunisian and played with a bow rather than plucked.
P.S. Once again, Merry Christmas everyone! : ) Here are Arthur Rackham’s Christmas Carol illustrations. <3