Dante Gabriel Rossetti
, British, 1828-1882
Title
Jane Burden (1839-1914)Date1858
MediumInk, graphite and wash with white highlights on paper
Dimensions
48.3 × 35.3 cm
Signedupper right: DGG [in monogram] Oxford 1858
Credit LinePurchased, 1883
Object numberNGI.2259
DescriptionRossetti first caught sight of Jane Burden in 1857 when she was seventeen. Smitten by her beauty, he persuaded her to model for Queen Guinevere, one of the characters in his ambitious series of frescos illustrating the legend of King Arthur for the Oxford Union Society building. The mural, for which this drawing was a preliminary study, was never executed. The designer William Morris, a close friend of Rossetti, married Jane Burden in 1859. With her mystical and sensuous looks, she became the archetypal Pre-Raphaelite muse.ProvenancePurchased, Christie's, London, 12 May 1883, D.G. Rossetti sale, lot 87Exhibition HistoryPreraffaeliten, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden Baden, 1937
British Portraits, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1956-1957
Drawings from the National Gallery of Ireland, Wildenstein, London, May - June 1967
Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1828-1882, Laing Art Gallery, New Castle-upon-Tyne, 1971
La Peinture Romantique Anglaise et les Preraphaelites, Petit Palais, Paris, 1972
Pre-Raphaelite Exhibition, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 1972
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Poet and Painter, Royal Academy of Arts, London; City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham, 1973
Master European Drawings, Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Colorado; Art Gallery, University of Maryland, College Park; Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin; The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minnesota; The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 1983
Anarchy and Beauty: William Morris and His Legacy, National Portrait Gallery, London, 16 October 2014 - 11 January 2015
Bristle: Hair and Hegemony, Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, 07 July - 25 September 2017
The Rossettis, Tate Britain, London UK, 06 April 2023 - 24 September 2023