and Rosseti

William Morris portrait decorated with istolar.art fluo flower pattern

Original photo by engraver and photographe Emery Walker

Jane Morris portrait decorated with istolar.art fluo flower pattern

An other kind of Frida Kahlo?

Original photo by John R. Parsons © National Portrait Gallery, London

Jane Morris (The Blue Silk Dress) – a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti of his lover. Illustration: Dante Gabriel Rossetti

 Jane Morris, pre-Raphaelite face of the Morris company brand, was essential to the creation and success of her husband’s decorative arts firm, Morris & Co

” One of the first decorations that William Morris made was a daisy-patterned wall hanging for Red House, which has since cemented his reputation as a design pioneer. “Jane later tells her daughter May, in a letter, that she chose the fabrics for that. And she and Morris sat down together, worked out what pattern was possible and then they stitched it together ” the guardian

Jane became Rossetti’s model and muse, featuring in hundreds of his pictures, defining the Pre-Raphaelite ‘look’. He challenged Victorian conceptions of ideal femininity by formulating an unconventional, ‘aesthetic’ type of beauty characterized by a:

-columnar neck  – thick waves of hair  – well-defined brows  – large expressive eyes- sensuous and long finger – massive limbs and large throat – exaggerated lips and eyes counterbalanced by a sense of remoteness

Did Jane Morris’s and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s affair have an influence on the Arts and Crafts Movement?