Jane Morris

PHOTOS OF MORRIS AND FAMILY

Jane Morris.

Photograph by J. Robert Parsons, posed by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1865.

Jane Burden was the daughter of an Oxford stable-hand. She met Morris in 1857 - when he, Rossetti, Burne-Jones and others were painting murals at the Oxford Union - and they were married two years later. The portraits of Jane Morris which Rossetti commissioned in 1865 are among the best known examples of Pre-Raphaelite photography. Rossetti was interested in the new art form and knew several of its early practitioners, such as Lewis Carroll (C. L. Dodgson). Although it was J. Robert Parsons who actually took the photographs, Rossetti arranged Jane’s poses, some of which he used more or less directly in subsequent paintings.