Angel with Inscription: God is Love

Details

Date: 1861
Dimensions: 51 x 41
Object Type: drawing
Material: pencil and ink on paper
Catalogue number: D223
Artist: Morris, William (1834 - 1896)
Sitter: Morris (née Burden) | Jane | 1839 | 1914
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1955

Originally thought to depict Iseult boarding a ship from the classic chivalric romance ‘Tristan and Iseult’, this portrait of Jane Morris in medieval costume is instead most likely to be a depiction of her as Helen of Troy. Morris chose the subject of ‘Tristan and Iseult’ for the mural he painted in the Oxford Union library building from 1857-1859, he created various sketches for the scene over the summer of 1857 and began work on his only easel painting on a similar theme, ‘La Belle Iseult’, now in the Tate collection.

However, this drawing’s paper is watermarked with the date of 1861 which places it after the Oxford Union murals were completed. Instead it is more likely to be a study for a mural planned for the staircase at Red House depicting the Trojan War. In the drawing Jane is climbing a small ladder to enter a ship, a likely reference to Helen of Troy whose great beauty, according to legend, triggered the Trojan War.

Morris’s interest in pattern design is already evident in the elaborate sleeve lining shown in this piece. Jane was a talented needlewoman and may well have made this costume herself.

Details

Date: 1890
Dimensions: 66 x 55.9
Object Type: drawing
Material: pastel on paper
Catalogue number: D74
Sitter: Fawcett, Philippa Garrett (4 April 1868 - 10 June 1948)
Artist: Rathbone, Harold Steward (1858 - 1929)
Credit notes: Gift of Philippa Garrett Fawcett, 1938

The subject of this portrait, Phillippa Garrett Fawcett (1868-1948) was the daughter of the pioneer suffragist Millicent Fawcett, she won early fame by achieving high marks in the Mathematics Tripos at Cambridge University- at the time women were not admitted to the University’s degrees. It is said that Fawcett inspired William Morris to use her name for one of the characters in his novel ‘News From Nowhere’. ‘Mistress Philippa’ is the skilled stone-carver whom William Guest meets during his journey up the Thames to Kelmcott.

The portrait is by Harold Steward Rathbone, after studying at the Slade School and in Paris, Rathbone worked as a pupil of Ford Madox Brown, assisting him with the murals at Manchester Town Hall. He played an active role in the Arts and Crafts Movement and in 1893 set up the Della Robbia Art Pottery in Birkenhead.

Details

Object Type: drawing
Catalogue number: BrD77
Artist: Shields, Frederic James (1833 - 1911)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1948

Shields was commissioned to decorate the interior of The Chapel of the Ascension, Bayswater by its benefactress, Emilia Russell Gurney. Shields first met Gurney in 1882, and later she sent both Shields and architect Herbert Horne to the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore della Pietrasanta in Naples for inspiration. After the building’s exterior was completed by Horne in 1894, Shields began work on his series of murals and panels depicting imagery from both the Old and New Testaments, including this design for St Jude (see also a watercolur of Malachi from the same scheme, also in WMG’s collection: BrW74). Sheilds discusses the paintings in his pamphlet Chapel of the Ascension: Its Story and Scheme (twelve editions published by the Women’s Printing Society between 1897 and 1935). The work was finally completed in 1910; however, the Chapel and its decorative scheme were destroyed during the Blitz in 1944.

Details

Date: c.1895-7
Dimensions: 25 x 17.5
Object Type: drawing
Catalogue number: D192
Artist: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1954

This pencil drawing by Edward Burne-Jones was a preliminary drawing for an illustration in William Morris’s Kelmscott Press edition of Sigurd the Volsung published in January 1898. The Kelmscott Press edition of Sigurd was first proposed in November 1891. At the time Burne-Jones was already working on the illustrations for the Kelmcott Press edition of The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, but agreed to provide 25 illustrations to the Sigurd. He found the subject much less congenial than working on Chaucer and his illustrations progressed slowly. Morris’s death in October 1896 put an end to the idea of a fully illustrated folio and in the final edition as printed, only two illustrations were used, ‘The Dwelling of Volsung’ (frontispiece) and ‘Gudrun Setting Fire to the Palace of Atli’. Another drawing, similar to this one, is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

Details

Date: c.1890
Dimensions: 95 x 131.4
Object Type: drawing
Catalogue number: D187
Artist: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Credit notes: Cecil French Bequest, 1954

An oil painting of this composition was exhibited at the New Gallery in 1893 but is now missing (reproduced in ‘Sir Edward Burne-Jones: A Record and a Review’ George Bell 1989 facing p.68). The oil painting shows minor variations in pose – the figure of Pilgrim for instance looks towards Love at right in oil painting and not at the seated female figure as in sketch and similarly the female figure looks out towards spectator and not at the Pilgrim as in this version. Love in the oil painting also carries arrows as well as a bow. The background is also more elaborate in the oil painting, with lilies and irises in foreground, details of architecture at left and right and a wood with briars at left and three birds flying near figure of Pilgrim./

The subject is another drawn from Chaucer’s ‘Romaunt of the Rose’, which had been used for an extensive series of embroideries (c. 1872-1878) designed by Morris and Burne-Jones and worked by Margaret, wife of Sir Lowthian Bell, and her daughter for the frieze of the dining room at Rounton Grange, Northallerton, Yorkshire, though in the embroideries, the treatment of this specific scene is different. Different treatments of the same scene are also to be found in the Kelmscott Chaucer illustrations and in a tapestry of which one is now in a private collection, the other in the Museum of Karlsruhe.

Details

Date: c.1873-75
Dimensions: 44 x 39
Object Type: drawing
Material: chalk on paper
Catalogue number: D186
Artist: Rossetti | Dante Gabriel | 1828 | 1882
Sitter: Wilding, Alexa (1845 - 25.04.1884)
Credit notes: Cecil French Bequest, 1954

The subject of this drawing, The Blessed Damozel, is taken from the artist Gabriel Dante Rossetti’s poem by the same title, which was first published in February 1850 in the Pre-Raphaelite magazine The Germ. The subject is a young woman who has died and waits for her lover to join her in heaven. The poem’s opening lines are: The blessed damozel looked out/From the gold bar of heaven/ Her eyes were deeper than the depth/ Of waters stilled at even.

This study was for an oil painting (now in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, USA). The painting was commissioned from Rossetti by the Scottish politician and art patron William Graham in 1871, and completed in 1877. The model was Alexa Wilding, a favourite of Rossetti who modelled for many of his paintings.

Details

Date: 1896 - 1901
Dimensions: 45 x 29
Object Type: drawing
Material: pencil on paper
Catalogue number: D279
Artist: Sloane, Mary Annie (10.12.1867 - 30.11.1961)
Credit notes: Mary Annie Sloane bequest, 1962

Mary Annie Sloane’s pencil drawing depicts a professional embroidery studio at the turn of the Twentieth century. Nine women are seated around a table with a woman seated on her own. The workers wear white pinafores and cuffs to keep their work clean.

The location of the workshop is unknown, however it is is annotated with the names of the workers: Miss Wells, Miss Cook, Mrs Forsythe, Mrs Lindus, Head, Underwood, Appleby, Knight, Lynes, Buckingham. Sloane’s address at Montague Mansions, Crawford Street, London is written on the reverse, where she lived from 1896-1901. The artist was a close friend of May Morris, and a member and Honorary Secretary of the Women’s Guild of Arts that May Morris founded in 1907. The pair travelled to Florence and Majorca, and Sloane drew several pencil portraits of may, now in the WMG collection. Sloane took over the lease of May’s house at 8 Hammersmith Terrace in London, after she moved permanently to Kelmscott Manor.

Details

Date: c. 1890
Object Type: drawing
Material: chalk on paper
Catalogue number: BrD29
Artist: Leighton, Frederick, Lord, 1830, 1896
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1936

Chalk study for Leighton’s oil painting ‘Solitude’, now in Maryhill Museum of Fine Arts collection, Washington. See also BrD29a for another study of the same subject. Solitude was inspired by studies the artist made of the Lynn of Dee near Braemar, Scotland. He described the spot to his sister as a location where “the vehemence of winter has scooped and worn pools so deep that . . . you come at last to absolute dark brown night . . . no sound, no faintest gurgle even reaches your ear; the silent mystery of it all absolutely invades and possesses you; that is what I vainly tried to put into my Solitude.”

A more worked up version of this drawing appeared in: Spielmann., M. H. “Current Art. Royal Academy, — I.” Magazine of Art (1890). London: Cassell and Company. Pp. 217-21.

Details

Date: c. 1890
Object Type: drawing
Material: chalk on paper
Catalogue number: BrD29a
Artist: Leighton, Frederick, Lord, 1830, 1896
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1936

Chalk study for Leighton’s oil painting ‘Solitude’, now in Maryhill Museum of Fine Arts collection, Washington. See also BrD29 for another study of the same subject. Solitude was inspired by studies the artist made of the Lynn of Dee near Braemar, Scotland. He described the spot to his sister as a location where “the vehemence of winter has scooped and worn pools so deep that . . . you come at last to absolute dark brown night . . . no sound, no faintest gurgle even reaches your ear; the silent mystery of it all absolutely invades and possesses you; that is what I vainly tried to put into my Solitude.”

This drawing was reproduced in: Spielmann., M. H. “Current Art. Royal Academy, — I.” Magazine of Art (1890). London: Cassell and Company. Pp. 217-21.

Details

Date: 02.07.1870
Dimensions: 34.1 x 50.5
Object Type: drawing
Material: pencil on paper
Catalogue number: D183
Sitter: Morris (née Burden) | Jane | 1839 | 1914
Artist: Rossetti | Dante Gabriel | 1828 | 1882

This intimate portrait of Jane Morris, William Morris’s wife, was drawn by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Rossetti was a key associate of William Morris and a founding member of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. when it was established in 1861. When he drew this work in 1870 he was involved in an intense emotional relationship with Jane Morris, which complicated his work with the Firm. In 1875 Morris restructured the Firm as Morris & Co., buying out the original partners including Rossetti.

Details

Date: c.1908
Dimensions: 25 x 25
Object Type: drawing
Material: pencil on paper
Catalogue number: D435
Artist: Merritt, Anna Lea, 1844, 1930
Sitter: Toynbee, Charlotte Maria (30 March 1841 - 8 January 1931)
Credit notes: Presented by the Trustees of the Anna Lea Merritt Estate, via the V&A, 1963

Portrait in coloured crayon of Charlotte Maria Toynbee, née Atwood, by the American artist Anna Lee Merrit. Toynbee studied at Oxford University, where she met her future husband, the economic historian Arnold Toynbee. After her husband’s death Toynbee served on the committee aiming to create a settlement in Oxford, which resulted in Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel, London (named after Arnold Toynbee). Toynbee was Poor Law Guardian as well as managing and contributing to the finances of the female Oxford college Lady Margaret Hall for forty years. This drawing is possibly for a study for an oil portrait of Toynbee by Merrit, in 1908.

Details

Date: c. 1878
Object Type: drawing
Material: pastel on paper
Catalogue number: D189
Artist: Hughes, Arthur, 1832, 1915
Sitter: Orrinsmith, Mabel (29.10.1871 - 1880)
Sitter: Orrinsmith, Ruth (23.02.1873 - 1954)
Credit notes: Presented by Mrs Hitch, 1954

These two children were daughters of Harvey and Lucy Orrinsmith (nee Faulkner). Before her marriage, Lucy and her sister Kate Faulkner, sisters of Charles Faulkner who was a partner in the Morris firm in its early years, worked for Morris & Co. executing embroideries and decorating ceramics. Lucy also engraved at least one block for the illustrations to a proposed edition of Morris’s The Earthly Paradise. The pastel portraits were studies for an oil painting also in the Gallery’s collection (O94), painted circa 1878 when Mabel was eight and Ruth seven.

Hughes came into contact with the Pre-Raphaelites while a student at the Royal Academy Schools in the 1840s. In 1857, Hughes joined Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Morris in painting the Arthurian murals at the Oxford Union. Although invited to become a partner in Morris, Marshall. Faulkner & Co., he withdrew shortly before the enterprise was launched in 1861. Hughes’s later work retains the sentiment, if not the technique, of his early Pre-Raphaelite pictures.

Both painting and pastels were donated to the Gallery by Lucy Orrinsmith’s grandaughter, Mrs L. Hitch.

Details

Date: c. 1868
Dimensions: 33.5 x 24.4
Object Type: drawing
Material: chalk on paper
Catalogue number: D188
Artist: Moore, Albert (1841 - 1893)
Credit notes: Cecil French Bequest, 1954

This drawing was formerly thought to have been a study for the central figure in Moore’s oil “Dreamers” (1882). It is in fact a preliminary study for a drawing, engraved on wood by W.J. Palmer, used to illustrate an edition of Milton’s “Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity”, illustrated by eminent artists, published in London by James Nisbet & Co., 1868. The engraving, which appears on p.13 of the edition, illustrated the lines:

“Nature in awe to him
Had doff’d her gaudy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathise.”

The whereabouts of the finished drawing is not known; presumably it was executed in ink, resembling the drawing of “The Muses” (brush and Indian ink over red chalk and pencil, 12 1/2 x 7 1/8 in) which Moore did to illustrate the lines:

“And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort to the angelick symphony”

in Milton’s poem (now in the British Museum 1900-6-13-66)

Details

Date: 07.08.1899
Dimensions: 31.2 x 21.6
Object Type: drawing
Material: chalk on paper
Catalogue number: BrD21
Artist: Fletcher, Hanslip, 1875, 1955
Credit notes: Brangwyn Gift, 1936

This is one of a series of sketches of Kelmscott Manor by the artist Hanslip Fletcher, during a visit to Kelmscott on 7th August 1899. Morris had died three years earlier in 1896, and the house was occupied by Jane Morris, who later bought it in 1913. The pencil sketch shows a view looking down the main staircase, with a brass chandelier and paintings on the wall.

Fletcher was an etcher, illustrator and painter specialising in architectural studies of London and elsewhere. He was born and lived in London and was a member of the Art Workers’ Guild.

Details

Date: c. 1880
Dimensions: 41.1 x 28.9
Object Type: drawing
Material: pencil and watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: D163
Artist: Mackmurdo | Arthur Heygate | 1851 | 1942
Credit notes: Mackmurdo Bequest, 1942

This monochrome study of a daisy flower head was drawn by Mackmurdo, most likely in the 1870s or 1880s. Mackmurdo frequently included flowers and other botanical forms in repeating patterns and furniture designs for the Century Guild. The irregular nature of the petals, as seen in the side view, imply the study was likely drawn by Mackmurdo from life. However, the stylised regular arrangement of the carpels, as seen in the top-down view, show traces of Mackmurdo’s distinctive style.

Object Type: drawing

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