''Water Willow'' is an 1871 oil painting by

Dante Gabriel Rossetti Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti (12 May 1828 – 9 April 1882), generally known as Dante Gabriel Rossetti (), was an English poet, illustrator, painter, translator and member of the Rossetti family. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhoo ...

. It depicts

Jane Morris Jane Morris (née Burden; 19 October 1839 – 26 January 1914) was an English embroiderer in the Arts and Crafts movement and artists' model who embodied the Pre-Raphaelite ideal of beauty. She was a model and muse to her husband Willi ...

in the river landscape near

Kelmscott Manor Kelmscott Manor is a limestone manor house in the Cotswolds village of Kelmscott, in West Oxfordshire, southern England. It dates from around 1570, with a late 17th-century wing, and is listed Grade I on the National Heritage List for Engla ...

, with the manor in the left background and Kelmscott Church below the hill to the right.Wildman (2004), p. 192.

Origins

Dante Gabriel Rossetti Study for Water Willow

In May 1871,

William Morris William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was a British textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, architectural conservationist, printer, translator and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. He ...

rented Kelmscott Manor, a 17th-century limestone manor house along the

Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...

near

Kelmscott Kelmscott is a village and civil parish on the River Thames in West Oxfordshire, about east of Lechlade in neighbouring Gloucestershire. Since 2001 it has absorbed Little Faringdon, which had been a separate civil parish. The 2011 Census reco ...

in Oxfordshire, to be a summer escape from London. Rossetti shared the lease, but the house soon became a retreat for Rossetti and Morris's wife Jane to have a long-lasting and complicated liaison. The two spent an idyllic summer there, with the Morris children, in 1871, while Morris himself travelled to

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

. Rossetti made a version of ''Water Willow'' in coloured chalks at Kelmscott, and then painted the small oil "to fit a beautiful old frame I have"Treuherz (2003), p. 201. In the chalk study, Jane holds a

pansy The garden pansy (''Viola'' × ''wittrockiana'') is a type of large-flowered hybrid plant cultivated as a garden flower. It is derived by hybridization from several species in the section ''Melanium'' ("the pansies") of the genus ''Viola'', ...

, symbol of love and remembrance, rather than the willow branches, a symbol of sorrow and longing, of the final painting. In 1877, facing financial difficulties, Rossetti sold the painting to "a new buyer", William Alfred Turner (1839–1886), a Manchester cotton spinner, who also purchased '' Proserpine'' at that time. Rossetti apologized to Jane Morris for selling the work, saying he was "really mortally sorry to part with the Kelmscott picture" but "felt there was no alternative".

Provenance and exhibitions

After Turner's death, the painting was sold at auction by Christie's on 28 April 1888 and was bought in by his executors. ''Water Willow'' was the first

Pre-Raphaelite The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (later known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti, James ...

painting acquired by the American collector

Samuel Bancroft Samuel Bancroft (January 21, 1840 – April 22, 1915) was an American industrialist as well as a major collector of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood artwork. His appreciation for art and his desire to give back to the community led to his becoming a p ...

, who purchased it in 1890. Bancroft later sent the painting back to England to be repaired by Charles Fairfax Murray. Murray asked and received Bancroft's permission to make a copy that he gave to Jane Morris, because "she was to have had the picture, it being a great favourite of hers."Quoted in Wildman, p. 192. The original was bequeathed to the

Delaware Art Museum The Delaware Art Museum is an art museum located on the Kentmere Parkway in Wilmington, Delaware, which holds a collection of more than 12,000 objects. The museum was founded in 1912 as the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts in honor of the artis ...

by Bancroft's descendants in 1935. The painting was exhibited in Manchester in 1882 and again in 1887, London in 1883, and Philadelphia in 1892. It was also exhibited in

Wilmington, Delaware Wilmington (Lenape: ''Paxahakink /'' ''Pakehakink)'' is the largest city in the U.S. state of Delaware. The city was built on the site of Fort Christina, the first Swedish settlement in North America. It lies at the confluence of the Christina ...

in 1917 and 1934,

New Haven, Connecticut New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134 ...

in 1976, and Liverpool and Amsterdam in 2003.

Notes

References

* * * {{Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Paintings in the Delaware Art Museum Paintings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1871 paintings Water in art