Mrs. Vernon Lushington

[Mrs. Vernon Lushington - Fogg Art Museum - Rossetti]

Vernon Lushington
He was a friend to artists, authors and activists, particularly those of The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the Arts and Crafts Movement who gravitated to the Working Men's College. In 1856, it was he who first introduced Edward Burne-Jones to Dante Gabriel Rossetti in his College rooms. Rossetti used Lushington’s wife, Jane, as a model in 1865.

Lushington, friend of William Morris, was a frequent visitor to Kelmscott Manor.

After the death of Mrs. Lushington, Vernon's three daughters were taken under the wing of Julia Stephen, wife of Leslie Stephen and mother of Virginia Woolf. Vernon Lushington's eldest daughter, Kitty, became the model for the title character of Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway (1925)