Jane Morris: a Centenary Exhibition

Jane Morris: A Centenary Exhibition

Exhibition Dates: July To October | Included In Price Of Admission To The Manor

exhibition, on loan from the National Portrait Gallery, will mark the centenary of Jane Morris’s death in 1914. The exhibition is a unique opportunity to view original photographs of Jane and her circle in the setting of the country home she loved, Kelmscott Manor.

 Jane Morris rose from humble beginnings as the daughter of an Oxford stableman to be the wife of William Morris (1834-96)—writer, designer, craftsman and social thinker. She is, however, perhaps most famous as the muse of Pre-Raphaelite artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82).

This exhibition presents Jane in the context of her closest family and friends including Edward Burne-Jones (‘Ned’) and his wife Georgiana (‘Georgie’), the architect and designer Philip Webb, artist Marie Stillman and poet Charles Algernon Swinburne. Jane’s lovers, Rossetti and Wilfred Scawen Bunt, are also represented.

Jane felt a deep love for Kelmscott Manor, writing to Philip Webb that it was ‘all delightful and home-like to me and I love it.’ She spent much time at the Manor from 1871, when the Morrises became its lease-holders, and following her husband’s death in 1896 she spent every summer there. She was able to purchase the manor outright in 1913. The exhibition includes rarely seen photographs of Jane taken at the Manor during the years of her widowhood.

- See more at: http://www.sal.org.uk/kelmscott-manor/things-to-do/whats-on/#sthash.birwng7M.dpuf