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Jane Morris: Study for "Mariana"

Subject William Shakespeare British
1868
Not on view
Long attracted by Jane Burden Morris’s unconventional beauty, Rossetti placed her at the center of this sheet, which he began as a head study, then developed to represent Mariana from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure and Tennyson’s poem Mariana in the Moated Grange. Her expression and dejected posture convey frustrated desire and weary resignation—in both sources, Mariana waits unhappily for a tarrying fiancé. The artist likely intended the theme to echo Jane’s real-life dilemma, as about 1868 her nine-year marriage to William Morris grew strained and she became increasingly close to Rossetti.

The drawing relates to a painting Rossetti made in 1870, now in the Aberdeen City Art Gallery and Museum, and echoes lines from act 4, scene 1 of Shakespeare's play, where Mariana listens to a song that includes the line, "Take, O take, those lips away..." In the painting the artist replaced the vase of flowers with a singing boy, and gave Mariana a piece of embroidery to hold rather than a sprig of sycamore-fig, peach or willow leaves.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Jane Morris: Study for "Mariana"
  • Artist: Dante Gabriel Rossetti (British, London 1828–1882 Birchington-on-Sea)
  • Subject: William Shakespeare (British, Stratford-upon-Avon 1564–1616 Stratford-upon-Avon)
  • Date: 1868
  • Medium: Red, brown, off-white and black chalk on tan paper; four sheets butt-joined (and slightly tented)
  • Dimensions: sheet: 35 3/4 x 30 3/4 in. (90.8 x 78.1 cm)
  • Classification: Drawings
  • Credit Line: Gift of Jessie Lemont Trausil, 1947
  • Object Number: 47.66
  • Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints

More Artwork

More Artwork
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St. Cecily / Cecilia (related to illustration for The Palace of Art in Tennyson's Poems, New York, 1903), Dante Gabriel Rossetti British, Photogravure
St. Cecily / Cecilia (related to illustration for The Palace of Art in Tennyson's Poems, New York, 1903)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
New Amsterdam Book Company
1903
St. Cecily / Cecilia (Illustration for The Palace of Art in Tennyson's Poems, New York, 1903), Dante Gabriel Rossetti British, Wood engraving
St. Cecily / Cecilia (Illustration for The Palace of Art in Tennyson's Poems, New York, 1903)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dalziel Brothers
1857–1903
Mythic Uther's Deeply Wounded Son (King Arthur and the Weeping Queens) (Illustration for "The Palace of Art" in Tennyson's Poems, New York, 1903), Dante Gabriel Rossetti British, Photogravure
Mythic Uther's Deeply Wounded Son (King Arthur and the Weeping Queens) (Illustration for "The Palace of Art" in Tennyson's Poems, New York, 1903)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
New Amsterdam Book Company
1903
Mariana in the South (related to illustration for "The Palace of Art," Tennyson's Poems, New York, 1903), Dante Gabriel Rossetti British, Photogravure
Mariana in the South (related to illustration for "The Palace of Art," Tennyson's Poems, New York, 1903)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
New Amsterdam Book Company
1903
Sir Galahad (from Tennyson's Poems, New York, 1903), Dante Gabriel Rossetti British, Wood engraving
Sir Galahad (from Tennyson's Poems, New York, 1903)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
William James Linton
1857–1903

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