Sauce de agua

In the summer of 1871 William Morris rented Kelmscott Manor, an old stone house on the Thames, as a country escape, and shared the lease with his friend and colleague Dante Gabriel Rossetti. While Morris was away on a long trip to Iceland, Rossetti stayed on with Morris's wife, Jane, and the two carried on the love affair that shadowed all three of their lives. This small portrait comes straight out of that summer. Jane stands in the meadow by the river with Kelmscott Manor itself just visible behind her, and she holds sprays of willow, a plant long tied to sorrow and longing. Years later it became the first Pre-Raphaelite picture bought by the American collector Samuel Bancroft, whose family left it to the Delaware Art Museum.