Women reading: November

The November painting on my Women Reading calendar (see also 1st of each month this year) is Dante Gabriel Rossetti's Jane Morris (The Blue Silk Dress) from 1868.  Jane Morris, of course, was William Morris's wife, and has the ultimate "pre-Raphaelite" face, heavy haired, sensuous, but rather distant and remote, suitable damsel for chivalric danger.  Across the top of the picture is an inscription which names the sitter and gives the date, then continues (in Latin) "famous for her poet husband, more famous for her face, may she now be famous for my picture".

I love these pictures in a guilty way, so technically accomplished and yet so near kitsch and sentimentality - and often in the pre-Raphaelite canon, stepping boldly right over the line into insufferable, cloying sickliness.  But this is a woman you would, must admire, but perhaps one you would take care not to be introduced to, lest she should be "La Belle Dame Sans Merci".

She seems to be reading a manuscript, perhaps a mediaeval one, more likely some faux-ancien concoction of her husband's.  Perhaps it's his 1868 poem, The Earthly Paradise, or perhaps its a draft of the forthcoming (1869) Grettis Saga: The Story of Grettir the Strong, which he translated (with Eirikr Magnusson) from the Icelandic; either of these, in a manuscript of his own, would fit the picture tellingly!

 

Comments

[glo]

I read the article from the Times, thank you for the extra information, Dark Puss.
I remain quite puzzled by what you both said about this sitter. I can't help but think that she really looks like a man in women's clothes! Please, have a careful look at the hands, the neck and the jaws - they are not feminine at all. Tell me please what it is you find sexy in her, it would be very helpful for my understanding of men. Seriously.
On the other hand, she reminds me of the women painted by Michelangelo (re the Sixtine Chapel for example), they too have male bodies with big muscles.

[Dark Puss]

Thrown for a second as I know of this woman as Jane Burden. Technically accomplished and indeed very close to kitsch as you say. I'd most certainly be happy to meet her, she looks very sexy to me and not in any way distressed! No doubt you read this article in The Times about a recently discovered mural by Morris in The Red House: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article591442.ece