Solitude – Miss Vesta Rollinstall 1878

Edwin Austin Abbey created this drawing, titled 'Solitude – Miss Vesta Rollinstall', using graphite on paper. The figure of a woman stands before a window, her hands clasped, gazing into the beyond. The window, a recurring motif, appears as a frame within a frame. From the Renaissance onwards, the window is a powerful symbol representing introspection, longing, and the boundary between the internal and external worlds. Consider Caspar David Friedrich's woman at the window. Here, as there, the view to the outside world suggests a sense of yearning and unrealized desires. The subject's posture, with hands clasped, evokes a mood of contemplation, solitude, and perhaps a touch of melancholy. Throughout art history, the window's meaning has cycled. Though a symbol of hope, here it reflects the complexity of human emotion, a continuous negotiation between internal reflection and external reality.