Rossetti's Obsession, William Morris Gallery

Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s obsession with the model Jane Morris is reexamined in this new exhibition of Pre-Raphaelite portraits at the William Morris Gallery 

L S Lowry said of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s paintings: ‘I don’t like his women at all, but they fascinate me, like a snake.’ Rossetti was fascinated by one woman in particular, Jane Morris: linguist, musician, embroiderer, model and wife to the radical artist and thinker William Morris.

Jane Morris and Rossetti

Marking the centenary of her death in 1914, this exhibition contains rarely seen drawings and pastel studies of Jane by Rossetti, with more candid moments that reveal some of her mysterious personality.

Rossetti painted Jane obsessively. The images beguile, if not like a ‘snake’ then with something of the same strangeness. Her sullen eyes, pouting lips, crimped and heavy hair, and almost boyish features are often arrayed in elaborate mythological costume and festooned with roses or sycamore. They have become the icons of Pre-Raphaelite womanhood.

Rossetti and Jane went beyond artist and sitter; the painter’s mental turbulence was caused by the uncontrollable desire to possess her, and when Rossetti downed a phial oflaudanum after the publication of a scathing critique (he was knocked out for 36 hours) it was Jane who he turned to during his recovery.  The attraction between the two did not go unnoticed by London society or Jane’s husband, who nevertheless had a tendency to keep his distance from the couple and once left them alone to visit Iceland. 

Proserpine series

Rossetti painted several versions of Jane as ‘Proserpine’. One of our favourites is the 1874 Tate version which shows a pouting Jane holding a half-bitten pomegranate – an erotic, ‘fatal fruit’ – next to a sprig of ivy. The myth of Proserpina, who was abducted and forced into marriage with the god of the underworld, was an obvious choice for a Rossetti maddened by Jane’s union to Morris. Though the Rape of Proserpine was an established subject for painting, in Rossetti’s hands the theme produces a more personal portrait of his own anguish. 

While Rossetti’s pictures are mythological and literary in their subjects, they are also entirely about their leading lady and Rossetti’s ardent fixation with her.