Jane Burden
Encyclopedia
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
artists' model
Model (art)
Art models are models who pose for photographers, painters, sculptors, and other artists as part of their work of art. Art models who pose in the nude for life drawing are usually called life models...
who embodied the Pre-Raphaelite
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti...
ideal
Ideal (ethics)
An ideal is a principle or value that one actively pursues as a goal. Ideals are particularly important in ethics, as the order in which one places them tends to determine the degree to which one reveals them as real and sincere. It is the application, in ethics, of a universal...
of beauty
Beauty
Beauty is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction. Beauty is studied as part of aesthetics, sociology, social psychology, and culture...
. She was a model and muse
Muse
The Muses in Greek mythology, poetry, and literature, are the goddesses who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge, related orally for centuries in the ancient culture, that was contained in poetic lyrics and myths...
to the artists William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
, whom she married, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...
.
Life
Jane Burden was born in OxfordOxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
to a stable
Stable
A stable is a building in which livestock, especially horses, are kept. It most commonly means a building that is divided into separate stalls for individual animals...
man named Robert Burden and his wife Ann Maizey. Around the time she was born, her parents were living at St Helen's Passage, in the parish of St Peter-in-the-East
St Peter-in-the-East
St Peter-in-the-East is a 12th century church on Queen's Lane, north of the High Street in central Oxford, England. It forms part of St Edmund Hall, one of the Oxford University colleges. It is now deconsecrated and houses the college library for graduates and undergraduates...
, off Holywell Street
Holywell Street
Holywell Street is a street in central Oxford, England. It runs east-west with Broad Street to the west and Longwall Street to the east. About half way along, Mansfield Road adjoins to the north.New College dominates the south side of the street...
in Oxford. This has since been marked with a blue plaque
Blue plaque
A blue plaque is a permanent sign installed in a public place to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person or event, serving as a historical marker....
. Her mother Ann was illiterate and probably came to Oxford as a domestic servant. Little is known of Jane Burden's childhood, but it was one of poverty
Poverty
Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...
and deprivation.
In October 1857, Jane Burden and her sister Elizabeth, known in the family as "Bessie", were attending a performance in Oxford of the Drury Lane
Drury Lane
Drury Lane is a street on the eastern boundary of the Covent Garden area of London, running between Aldwych and High Holborn. The northern part is in the borough of Camden and the southern part in the City of Westminster....
Theatre Company. Jane was noticed by the artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
s Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...
and Edward Burne-Jones
Edward Burne-Jones
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company...
who belonged to a group of artists painting the Oxford Union murals
Oxford Union murals
The Oxford Union murals are a series of mural decorations in the Oxford Union library building. The series was executed by a team of Pre-Raphaelite artists including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones...
, based on Arthurian
King Arthur
King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...
tales. Struck by Jane's beauty, they sought her to model for them. Jane initially sat mainly for Rossetti, who needed a model for Queen Guinevere
Guinevere
Guinevere was the legendary queen consort of King Arthur. In tales and folklore, she was said to have had a love affair with Arthur's chief knight Sir Lancelot...
. After this, Jane sat for Morris, who was working on an easel painting, La Belle Iseult
Iseult
Iseult is the name of several characters in the Arthurian story of Tristan and Iseult. The most prominent is Iseult of Ireland, wife of Mark of Cornwall and adulterous lover of Sir Tristan. Her mother, the Queen of Ireland, is also named Iseult...
(Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
). Like Rossetti, Morris also used Jane as his model for his rendition of Queen Guinevere. During this period, Morris fell in love with Jane and they were engaged.
Jane Burden's education was extremely limited and she was probably intended to go into domestic service. After her engagement, Jane was privately educated. Her keen intelligence allowed her essentially to recreate herself. She was a voracious reader and became proficient in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and later Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
. She also became an accomplished pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
with a strong background in classical music. Her manners and speech became refined to an extent that contemporaries referred to her as "Queenly". Later in life, she would have no trouble moving in upper class
Upper class
In social science, the "upper class" is the group of people at the top of a social hierarchy. Members of an upper class may have great power over the allocation of resources and governmental policy in their area.- Historical meaning :...
circles and she appears to have been the model for Mrs Higgins in Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
's play Pygmalion
Pygmalion (play)
Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts is a play by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw. Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of...
(1914).
She married William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
at St Michael's Church
St Michael at the Northgate
St Michael at the North Gate is a church in Cornmarket Street, at the junction with Ship Street, in central Oxford, England. The church is so-called because this is the location of the original north gate of Oxford when it was surrounded by a city wall....
, Oxford, on 26 April 1859. Her father was at that time described as a groom
Groom (horses)
A groom is a person who is responsible for some or all aspects of the management of horses and/or the care of the stables themselves. The term most often refers to a person who is the employee of a stable owner, but even an owner of a horse may perform the duties of a groom, particularly if the...
, in stables at 65 Holywell Street
Holywell Street
Holywell Street is a street in central Oxford, England. It runs east-west with Broad Street to the west and Longwall Street to the east. About half way along, Mansfield Road adjoins to the north.New College dominates the south side of the street...
, Oxford.
Jane Burden and William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
lived firstly at the Red House
Red House (London)
Red House in Bexleyheath in southeast London, England, is a major building of the history of the Arts and Crafts style and of 19th century British architecture. It was designed during 1859 by its owner, William Morris, and the architect Philip Webb, with wall paintings and stained glass by Edward...
in Bexleyheath
Bexleyheath
Bexleyheath is a main suburban district of Southeast London, England, in the London Borough of Bexley with a small percentage of the district itself being in the London Borough of Greenwich. Bexleyheath is located on the border of Inner London and Outer London. It is east south-east of Charing Cross...
, Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
. While there, they had two daughters, Jane Alice "Jenny", born January 1861, and Mary "May"
May Morris
Mary "May" Morris was an English artisan, embroidery designer, socialist, and editor. She was the younger daughter of the Pre-Raphaelite artist and designer William Morris and his wife and artists' model Jane Morris....
(March 1862–1938), who was the editor of her father's works.They then moved to Queens Square in London and later bought Kelmscott House in Hammersmith which they used as their main residence. In 1871 Morris and Rossetti took out a joint tenancy on Kelmscott Manor on the Gloucestershire-Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire is a county in the South East region of England, bordering on Warwickshire and Northamptonshire , Buckinghamshire , Berkshire , Wiltshire and Gloucestershire ....
-Wiltshire
Wiltshire
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...
borders, which is now open to the public. Morris went to Iceland at this point leaving Rossetti and Jane to furnish the lovely house and spend the summer there. It is believed that the tenancy was taken out with their relationship in mind, any public scandal would have ruined them all.
Jane Morris had became closely attached to the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...
and became a favourite muse
Muse
The Muses in Greek mythology, poetry, and literature, are the goddesses who inspire the creation of literature and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge, related orally for centuries in the ancient culture, that was contained in poetic lyrics and myths...
of his. Their relationship is considered to have started in 1865 and lasted, on differing levels, until his death in 1882. The two shared a deep emotional relationship, with Rossetti inspired by her to write poetry and create some of his best later paintings. Jane's discovery of his dependence on the drug chloral
Chloral hydrate
Chloral hydrate is a sedative and hypnotic drug as well as a chemical reagent and precursor. The name chloral hydrate indicates that it is formed from chloral by the addition of one molecule of water. Its chemical formula is C2H3Cl3O2....
taken to help cure his insomnia, eventually led her to distance herself somewhat from him, although they stayed in touch until he died in 1882.
In 1884, Jane Morris met the poet and political activist Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was an English poet and writer. He was born at Petworth House in Sussex, and served in the Diplomatic Service from 1858 to 1869. His mother was a Catholic convert and he was educated at Twyford School, Stonyhurst and at St Mary's College, Oscott...
at a house party given by her close friend Rosalind Howard
Rosalind Howard, Countess of Carlisle
Rosalind Frances Howard, Countess of Carlisle , sometimes known as The Radical Countess, was a British aristocrat and campaigner....
(later Countess of Carlisle). There appears to have been an immediate attraction between the two. By 1887 at the latest, the pair had become lovers. Their sexual relationship would continue until 1894, and they remained close friends until Jane's death.
Jane Morris was an ardent supporter of Irish Home Rule. A few months before her death Jane managed to buy Kelmscott Manor to secure it for her daughters future, although she didn't return to the house after having purchased it.
William Morris died on 3 October 1896 at Kelmscott House
Kelmscott House
Kelmscott House is a historic building in Hammersmith, the London home of William Morris from April 1879 to his death in October 1896.Originally called "The Retreat", Morris renamed it after the Oxfordshire village of Kelmscott where he had lived at Kelmscott Manor from June 1871.Kelmscott House is...
, Hammersmith
Hammersmith
Hammersmith is an urban centre in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in west London, England, in the United Kingdom, approximately five miles west of Charing Cross on the north bank of the River Thames...
, London. Jane died on 26 January 1914 while staying at 5 Brock Street, Bath.
Additional images
Paintings of Jane Morris by Dante Gabriel RossettiDante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...
:
- The Blue Silk Dress, 1868.
- Persephone or Proserpine, 1874.
- Astarte Syriaca, 1875–79. City Art Gallery, Manchester.
- Beatrice, a Portrait of Jane Morris, 1879. Oil on canvas 13½ × 11 inches.
- The Day Dream, 1880. Oil on canvas. Victoria and Albert MuseumVictoria and Albert MuseumThe Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...
, London. - La Donna della Fiamma, 1877. Coloured chalks. Manchester Art GalleryManchester Art GalleryManchester Art Gallery is a publicly-owned art gallery in Manchester, England. It was formerly known as Manchester City Art Gallery.The gallery was opened in 1824 and today occupies three buildings, the oldest of which - designed by Sir Charles Barry - is Grade I listed and was originally home to...
. - La Donna della Finestra, 1879. Oil on canvas. Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard University, Cambridge, USA.
- La Donna Della Finestra, 1881 (unfinished).
- Jane Morris, c. 1860. Pencil.
- Jane Morris, 1865.
- Mariana, 1870. Aberdeen Art GalleryAberdeen Art GalleryAberdeen Art Gallery is the main visual arts exhibition space in the city of Aberdeen in Scotland. It opened in 1885, in a building designed by Alexander Marshall Mackenzie....
. - Pandora, 1869.
- Pandora, 1871.
- La Pia de' Tolomei, 1866-1870. Oil on canvas. Spencer Museum of ArtSpencer Museum of ArtThe Spencer Museum of Art, or SMA, is an art museum on the campus of University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. While admission is free, donations are accepted. Also located inside the Spencer Museum of Art are the Kress Foundation Department of Art History, and the Murphy Library of Art &...
, University of Kansas. - Portrait of Mrs William Morris.
- Portrait of Jane Morris, 1858. Pen.
- Proserpine, 1873–1877. Oil on canvas. Tate GalleryTate GalleryThe Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
, London. - Reverie, 1868. Chalk on paper. Ashmolean MuseumAshmolean MuseumThe Ashmolean Museum on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is the world's first university museum...
, Oxford, UK. - The Roseleaf, 1865. Pencil.
- Study of Guinevere for "Sir Lancelot in the Queen's Chamber", 1857.
Photographs of Jane Burden by Rossetti are available at http://www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/sa140.raw.html.
By William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
:
- Queen Guinevere (also called La Belle Iseult), 1858. Oil.
By Edward Burne-Jones
Edward Burne-Jones
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company...
:
- Numerous stained-glass windows, including at Christ Church, OxfordChrist Church, OxfordChrist Church or house of Christ, and thus sometimes known as The House), is one of the largest constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England...
.
By Evelyn De Morgan
Evelyn De Morgan
Evelyn De Morgan was an English Pre-Raphaelite painter.She was born Evelyn Pickering. Her parents were of upper middle class. Her father was Percival Pickering QC, the Recorder of Pontefract...
:
- Portrait of Jane Morris, 1904.
Possibly based on Jane Burden (Morris) / "Venus Verticordia" — oil — 1863–8. Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum
Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum
The Russell-Cotes Museum is an art gallery and museum in Bournemouth, England. It is located on the top of the East Cliff, next to the Royal Bath Hotel.-History and collections:...
, Bournemouth.