Sonning Bridge c1885

Violet Hunt (who had been to school with Jenny and May) stood on the old bridge at Sonning and spotted Jane and family with others midstream in a boat:

"I recognised the occupants of the first boat that waited a little as the other negotiated the archway. In a flash I realised that they were the right people to be rowing in this bit of purely medieval England. Standing up and shouting indecorously worded advice to the other boat was the man who loved a battle shout better than a symphony, the Defender of Guievere (sic) and of Gudrun, straddling, legs apart in the boat as erstwhile waggishly depicted by his pals on the ceiling of the Oxford Union, the Viking in the blue byrnie, the maker of my mother's dining-room table; now, in the afternoon of his life, self-styled, 'the idle singer of an empty day', the Hector of Hammersmith and Varangian Guard of his own Metropolitan District - William Morris ...
Behind him, sitting up very stiffly, as a weary queen on her dias of Turkey-red cushions, was the historic Janey - 'Pandora' - 'Prosperpina' - 'Aurea Catena' - 'Astarte Syriaca', and 'La Pia' of the Purgatorio - gaunt, pale, ashen-coloured hair and all. 'Scarecrow', as she called herself but still a 'Stunner', to use the Pre-Raphaelite term of praise, she looked just then, in the morning glare, very like the forlorn wife of Nello Di Pietro, the lady undone by the miasma of the marshes:

Siena mi fe, Maremma mi disfecemi.

May relaxed, late 1890's

Jane ?

In the de Morgan gallery Flickr discussion group there is speculation that Janey modelled for this picture by Evelyn de Morgan. They were certainly friends and Janey definitely modelled for The Hour Glass. Not obvious to me, but ?

Jenny's illness

When May and Jenny were sent to school at Notting Hill it was Jenny that was the academic one 'who kept her books and dictionaries in a book box'. A schoo friend said she was very like William, who spoke in a rapid way like she wanted to say something and get it over with. She became a prize pupil especially good at Latin and English. She was expected to go to the women's college - Girton.

But her 'epilepsy' came on in Summer 1876. The first fit seems to have been triggered by a boating accident in the Thames when she over-balanced and fell in. Jane asked Georgie for help in finding a doctor (they were new to the neighbourhood) and she was diagnosed as epileptic- incurable then and now (though it can be controlled now). It had only recently been seen as something not supernatural - and 1:4 mental patients were probably epileptic.

Untreated it was unpredictable and could come on at anytime. She was treatred at first with potassium bromides (still used as a veterinary drug, as an antiepileptic medication for dogs and cats). She may also have had surgery but no mention is made of this in the letters.

Although looked after at home or sent to stay in convalescent homes (probably more for Jane's sake) her condition inevitably deteriorated and she was considered not to be able to work or marry. There are some letters she wrote but I can't find them yet.

She was close to Georgie and her daughter Margaret but was mainly looked after by Jane, May and various Nurses. When her Father was home she seems to have been very close to him. Blunt remembers how she defended William if she thought others were making fun of him. Jane wrote to Blunt that every fit was a 'dagger in my heart'.

Her treatments made her fat and Jane describes Jenny and William rambling on the hills like 'two happy giant children'. In many ways it could be said that William transferred his affections from Jane to Jenny and spoke to them of his dreams. He wrote Jenny hundreds of letters and she appears in his books as a seer and visionary.

Audio: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Salutation of Beatrice

http://www.christies.com/features/audio-dante-gabriel-rossetti-the-salutation-2422-4.aspx

The Tapestry Room, with a view of William Morris's bedroom

The fireplace has the Turner crest sculpted in relief; panelling is hung with four of the series of mid-seventeenth century tapestries from Brussels or Antwerp, depicting the Life of Samson (Judges, 14-16); the pelmet on Morris's bed displays his poem 'For the bed at Kelmscott', composed in 1891 and embroidered by his daughter May Morris (1862-1938);

The sitting room, Kelmscott Manor, Oxfordshire, from 'The English Manor House'

Details of the covelet of William Morris's bed, embroidered by Jane Morris in 1894-5 at Kelmscott Manor.

Details of the covelet of William Morris's bed, embroidered by Jane Morris in 1894-5 at Kelmscott Manor.

The flagged path leading up to the three-storied front of Kelmscott Manor.

Kelmscott village

William Morris's Kelmscott: Landscape and History

Edited by Alan Crossley, Tom Hassall and Peter Salway

ISBN: ISBN-13: 978-1-905119-13-4 (hdbk); ISBN-13: 978-1-905119-14-1 pbk; 256pp, col and b/w ills

Distributor: Oxbow Books

Kelmscott Manor is forever linked with the name of William Morris, pioneer conservationist and utopian socialist, designer and father of the Arts and Crafts tradition. The manor played a crucial role in shaping his thought: at the climactic moment of his futuristic novel, News from Nowhere, Morris lifts the latch of the Manors garden gate and finds his personal holy grail. Morris was drawn by the organic relationship between Kelmscott and its landscape: the linkage of stone walls and roof tiles to the geology and the soil, and the honest toil of the people to the agricultural cycle .

The fruits of the Kelmscott Landcape Project established in 1996 by the Society of Antiquaries of London, the owners of Kelmscott Manor today, this book is a multi-faceted examination of Kelmscotts history. Archaeology, from prehistory to the present day, the architectural development of the Manor before and after Morris knew it, and the art that the village and Manor have inspiredall received rich, illustrated coverage. The result is a vivid portrait of a Thames-side village transformed by its association with Morris, a book which demonstrates the rich connections between culture and landscape in a particular place.

Odd menage sharing life in the country

http://www.oxfordtimes.co.uk/leisure/9683505.Odd_menage_sharing_life_in_the_country/

'Unique' picture of William Morris discovered in Wimbledon

http://www.surreycomet.co.uk/news/wimbledon/9721101._Unique__picture_of_William_Morris_discovered/

May Morris stamp

http://janmarsh.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/may-morris-postage-stamp.html

Red House about 1862

The Oriel window inside and out

View from a Red House window

Side Hall

Front Hall

Jane and the oriole window where the ladies sat to do tapestry while the men played croquet on the lawn

http://thesaffronsea.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/red-house.html

The Grange 1874

Back :
Wiliam Morris, Burne-Jones, Edward Richard Jones (BJ father), Philip BJ
Front:
May Morris, Jane Morris, Margaret BJ, Jenny Morris, Georgina BJ
summer 1874

Reflections on Jane Morris

http://preraphaelitesisterhood.com/reflections-on-jane-morris/

[Musing in the Meadow, Margje Bijl, copyright Pictoright, 2010
Bistre ink and home made iron gall ink drawing
on an original photo by Sipco Feenstra, 1992]

Astarte Syriaca (1877) Manchester City Art Gallery

Proserpine (1874)

Proserpine (1874) Tate Gallery, London

Proserpine [or Persephone in Greek mythology], is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter ~ the goddess of harvest.  In the myth, she is kidnapped by the love-stricken Hades to the underworld.  Demeter searches in vain for her daughter and during her search, causes a long drought to fall on the people. Zeus the orders Hades to release Proserpine.  In an uncanny resemblance to Genesis’ Eve, Hades tricks her into eating forbidden fruit ~ in this case, pomegranate seeds, because it is said that whomever eats or drinks anything while in the Underworld must remain there for all eternity.  In some versions, Proserpine eats four to six seeds, the number of dry months when nothing grows and she must return to the Underworld.

Again, rich hues and realism make this an easy choice.  Jane Morris is the muse here and Rossetti penned a sonnet of longing to go with the painting:

Dire fruit, which, tasted once, must thrall me here.
Afar those skies from this Tartarean grey   

The irony here is that Jane Morris was trapped in an unhappy marriage to William Morris and both she and Rossetti were tasting the forbidden fruit of an adulterous affair.

2012 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Society’s ownership of Kelmscott Manor

[Kelmscott Manor, News From Nowhere, William Morris]

2012 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Society’s ownership of Kelmscott Manor

It was owned by a family of yeoman farmers, the Turners, who had lived there for 300 years, creating an ensemble of attractive grey limestone buildings beside a canal from the nearby Thames, dug to transport their produce and materials.

Morris began renting Kelmscott as a summer retreat in 1871. It embodied his utopian ideals, summed up in News From Nowhere. The novel describes a future world (imagined as 1952) in a journey on the Thames from Hammersmith to Kelmscott, where there is equality for men and women, work is a pleasure, and the land is fruitful – in short, a kind of Eden. Published by Morris's Kelmscott Press in Hammersmith, it depicts the house as its frontispiece.

May was nine years old when she first visited Kelmscott Manor, and she at once took to country life.


After Morris's death in 1861, Jane bought the property from the Turners, and when she died, May, a successful designer with an unsuccessful marriage behind her, took up residence in the house. She lived there for the rest of her life with her companion, a down-to-earth local landgirl called Mary Lobb, who thought William Morris 'a dreadful old bore'. Together they made a trip to Icelend, retracing the steps of Morris who had visited there in 1871 when he was translating the Icelandic sagas into English.

May bequeathed the Kelmscott estate to Oxford University to be used 'as a house of rest for artists, men of letters, scholars and men of science', and kept it in the condition her father had left it, with no modern improvements. The property subsequently passed to the Society of Antiquaries, to which Morris himself had belonged and, with the help of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, which he had founded, a major overhaul of the building was undertaken in the 1960s.

Drawing room at Hammersmith House in 1896

includes Morris' woven 'Bird' tapestry and pottery by William de Morgan. The furniture is to designs by Philip Webb

Letter to Janey

I've been reading some of May's 12 volume collected edition (online) that she dedicated her life compiling - starting to publish in 1910 onwards. I love the idea of her sitting in the beauty of Kelmscott compiling this. Anyway it has some lovely gems like this birthday letter from William to Jane. How affectionate it is.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Jane Burden, aged 18 (detail)

1858

pen, ink and pencil and wash with white highlights

National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

(Morris married Jane the next year)

The Blessed Damosel

Detail of Dante's Dream at the Time of the Death of Beatrice 1871

with Rossetti painting Jane as Beatrice

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante's_Dream

----------------------

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/exhibitions/rossetti/conservation/dantesdream/

The Bower Meadow

apart from showing 'the brooch', that is May dancing in the background

Jane's bedroom in the Red House

Jane's bedroom in Kelmscott House, London

Rossetti's studio

One face looks out from all his canvases,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,
A saint, an angel — every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more or less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.

“In an Artist’s Studio” by Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

Image: Detail of the interior of Gabriel Dante Rossetti’s studio at Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. Drawing by H. Treffry Dunn (1882?) taken from H. C. Marillier, Dante Gabriel Rossetti: An Illustrated Memorial of His Art and Life (1899

Buckland, Berkshire

Detail of the east window of the chancel by Henry Holiday (1839-1927), dating from the late nineteenth century. Holiday was a follower of the pre-Raphaelite movement; the figure on the left strongly resembles Jane Morris.

St Martin Scarborough Altar frontal designed by William and worked by Jane Morris

Blunt - Tuesday's meeting in his diary on July 29, 1884:

I spent a couple of hours in Hammersmith with Mrs. Morris and her husband, a democratic socialist. We discussed the merits of his conception of the universe, which I see do not fit with my ideas. However, we agree in many respects. Gladstone says that a conservative is confirmed, too old to change. The House of Morris has fashioned a beautiful garden full of flowers, especially carnations. I like these suburban gardens have more personality than others, and use of space. 

The paper also includes a beautiful picture of Jane Morris in the garden in 1884

Audio: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Salutation of Beatrice

Audio: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Salutation of Beatric

http://www.christies.com/features/audio-dante-gabriel-rossetti-the-salutation-2422-4.aspx

The Gardens of William Morris

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gardens-William-Douglas-Hamilton-Duchess-Hamilton/dp/1556708718/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1337081735&sr=1-1

Violet Hunt description

[Sonning Bridge c1885]

Violet Hunt (who had been to school with Jenny and May) stood on the old bridge at Sonning and spotted Jane and family with others midstream in a boat:

"I recognised the occupants of the first boat that waited a little as the other negotiated the archway. In a flash I realised that they were the right people to be rowing in this bit of purely medieval England. Standing up and shouting indecorously worded advice to the other boat was the man who loved a battle shout better than a symphony, the Defender of Guievere (sic) and of Gudrun, straddling, legs apart in the boat as erstwhile waggishly depicted by his pals on the ceiling of the Oxford Union, the Viking in the blue byrnie, the maker of my mother's dining-room table; now, in the afternoon of his life, self-styled, 'the idle singer of an empty day', the Hector of Hammersmith and Varangian Guard of his own Metropolitan District - William Morris ...
Behind him, sitting up very stiffly, as a weary queen on her dias of Turkey-red cushions, was the historic Janey - 'Pandora' - 'Prosperpina' - 'Aurea Catena' - 'Astarte Syriaca', and 'La Pia' of the Purgatorio - gaunt, pale, ashen-coloured hair and all. 'Scarecrow', as she called herself but still a 'Stunner', to use the Pre-Raphaelite term of praise, she looked just then, in the morning glare, very like the forlorn wife of Nello Di Pietro, the lady undone by the miasma of the marshes:

Siena mi fe, Maremma mi disfecemi.

Kelmscott House, Hammersmith

Kelmscott House, Hammersmith

George MacDonald was the immediate recent tenant for the house which he called The Retreat. William Morris changed the name to Kelmscott House, because he said that people would think he had gone to live in a nursing home.

Jane's last meeting with Rossetti

Sitting on a wall Jane told Blunt that though her love for Rossetti had ended in 1875, she met the year before he died in 1881. She was to spend the afternoon with him at his home in Chelsea, and dined with him, and after dinner almost convinced him to come to the house to see the girls when he turned (away). I had half crossed the small yard - "I was very excited that day," she said, "but never saw him again."

Tag Photo

Rare photo of female farmworkers at Kelmscott, 1916

Antique pre-1900 Amber Apothecary Glass Bottle Jar Chloral. Hydrat.

Rossetti actually died of of 'Brights Disease', a disease of the kidneys of which he had been suffering for some time. However he consumed large amounts of chloral and whisky - a awful combination. Ironic he took this after the lesson learnt from Lizzie's addiction to laudanum (died 1862). Jane was shocked at the huge amounts he took towards the end of his life. 

"In the late '60s Rossetti began to suffer from headaches and weakened eyesight, and began to take chloral mixed with whiskey to cure insomnia. Chloral accentuated the depression and paranoia latent in Rossetti's nature, and Robert Buchanan's attack on Rossetti and Swinburne in "The Fleshly School of Poetry" (1871) changed him completely. In the summer of 1872 he suffered a mental breakdown, complete with hallucinations and accusing voices. He was taken to Scotland, where he attempted suicide, but gradually recovered, and within a few months was able to paint again. His health continued to deteriorate slowly (he was still taking chloral), but did not much interfere with his work."

[Antique pre-1900 Amber Apothecary Glass Bottle Jar Chloral. Hydrat.

Bottle: 3 3/8 " tall x 1 3/4 x 1 3/4]

Photograph of Kelmscott Manor, Oxfordshire, with William and May Morris, early 1890s

Although they had a close relationship, there are very few images of May with her father. This one was taken at Kelmscott Manor near the end of Morris's life in the 1890s. Sadly, there is a mark on the photo across father and daughter.

Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum, from the Emery Walker Library

Pamphlet for the Morris Memorial Hall, Kelmscott, 1930s

Her lasting legacy to the village of Kelmscott was the building of a village hall. She had the idea long before it was realised. Her friend the architect Ernest Gimson designed the building. He died in 1919, but the building wasn't built until 1934, not long before May herself died. The opening was a great event, crammed with the great and the good. George Bernard Shaw opened the building, and Ramsey MacDonald, the prime minister, arrived late and could barely get in the room!

Part of the Emery Walker Library

The Manor House, Kelmscott, from the Farm by E H New

The Manor House, Kelmscott, from the Farm by E H New
William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti jointly leased Kelmscott Manor, near Lechlade as a rural retreat in 1871. The house was bought by Jane Morris after her husband died, and stayed in the family until their daughter May's death in 1938.

Woodcut of The Manor House, Kelmscott, from the Farm by E H New, around 1895-1900.

Scenes from the Fall of Troy, by William Morris, handwritten by May Morris

Scenes from the Fall of Troy, by William Morris, handwritten by May Morris

Although she had been active in pursuing her own career in her 20s and 30s, in the latter half of her life May dedicated herself to her father's memory. She edited William Morris's complete works, a mammoth task. This book shows more what she did for fun - this poem was written out by her and bound as an 80th birthday present for Emery Walker.

Part of the Emery Walker Library

May with a cup of tea

Jane Morris drawings at auction

The catalogue with the 3 recently discovered drawings by Rossetti is lot 160
http://www.dukes-auctions.com/Catalogues/pf120412/index.html

The third from 1870 is called Venus With Two Doves for which Jane Morris is the subject. On an accompanying note William Rossetti wrote that his brother had "thought about painting this." 
Statement from Andrew Marlborough from the saleroom.


Just for interest even with a reserve of £15-20k they didn't sell at the auction. I'm still not quite convinced by this but the catalogue was prepared with the help of Christopher Newall who is pretty good.