Jane Morris (The Blue Silk Dress) - Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Archival giclée
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Description
A portrait of Jane Morris by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, featuring the sitter in a striking blue silk dress against a crimson background.
Painted in 1868, this portrait depicts Jane Morris, a frequent muse for Dante Gabriel Rossetti. She is shown seated in a three-quarter profile, her gaze directed away from the viewer. The composition is defined by the contrast between the deep, lustrous blue of her silk dress and the heavy, crimson drapery that forms the background. Rossetti employs a deliberate arrangement of objects, including a glass vase containing white roses and an open book, to create a sense of quietude and domestic intimacy.
Rossetti was a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group that sought to return to the clarity and detail found in art before the time of Raphael. In this work, the focus on the texture of the fabric and the specific, melancholic expression of the sitter reflects the aesthetic concerns of the later Pre-Raphaelite period. The painting is characteristic of Rossetti's mature style, where the physical presence of the model is elevated through a carefully constructed, almost theatrical setting. The heavy folds of the blue silk are rendered with attention to the way light catches the material, while the background curtains provide a flattened, decorative quality that pushes the figure forward. This portrait is one of several studies Rossetti produced of Jane Morris, capturing her distinct features and the specific mood he often associated with her persona. The inclusion of the roses and the book adds a layer of symbolic weight, common in Victorian portraiture, suggesting a moment of reflection or reading interrupted. The work remains a primary example of the artist's ability to blend realistic portraiture with a highly stylised, romanticised vision of his subjects.
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Each print is produced to order using 12-colour giclée printing on FSC-certified archival paper. Designed in Britain and printed at your nearest production hub to reduce waste and speed up delivery.
Care and materials
Specific Features
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- Museum-grade giclée printing for rich, fade-resistant colour
- Archival matte fine-art paper, FSC-certified
- Multiple sizes and framing options available
- Frames in black, natural wood, dark wood or white
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Care & Cleaning
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- Dust gently with a soft, dry cloth
- Avoid prolonged direct sunlight
- Never use liquid cleaners on the print or canvas surface
- Keep in a dry, room-temperature space
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Materials & Sizing
Museum-grade giclée on FSC-certified archival matte paper, with framed and canvas options.
- Paper sizes: A4, A3, A2, A1, A0 and B2 (50×70 cm)
- Canvas: XS (20×30 cm) to Large (60×90 cm)
- Frames: black, natural wood, dark wood or white
Jane Morris (The Blue Silk Dress) - Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Artist Biography
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
He was born in London to an Italian political exile and named after the author of the Divine Comedy. His father was a professor of Italian at King's College. The household ran on poetry, politics, and argument. Rossetti wrote verse throughout his life and considered himself a poet as much as a painter.
His early paintings are small, bright, and meticulously detailed in the Pre-Raphaelite manner. The Girlhood of Mary Virgin and Ecce Ancilla Domini have the flat, jewelled quality of medieval altarpieces. After 1860 the style changed. The paintings became larger, more sensual, and dominated by the face and figure of Jane Burden, who was William Morris's wife.
The relationship between Rossetti, Morris, and Jane is one of the more uncomfortable triangles in art history. Morris married her. Rossetti painted her obsessively. She modelled for Proserpine, La Pia de' Tolomei, and dozens of other works in which she appears as a mythological woman trapped in an unwanted situation. Whether the affair was physical remains debated. Morris, characteristically, said nothing publicly and channelled his feelings into wallpaper.
Rossetti buried a manuscript of his poems in his wife Lizzie Siddal's coffin when she died of a laudanum overdose in 1862. Seven years later he had the coffin exhumed to retrieve them. He published the poems. He was addicted to chloral hydrate by then and increasingly paranoid. He died in 1882, at fifty-three.
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