Jane Morris The Pre-Raphaelite Model of Beauty

Immortalized in the sensuous paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti & widely imitated by fashionable women, Jane Morris (1839-1914) was, nonetheless, not your typical Victorian beauty. Her unruly dark hair, dense brows, tall & angular figure, & taste for loose, unadorned garments stood out in an age that favored fair-haired women of small stature, with feminine curves exaggerated by corsets & crinolines. Drawing on dozens of lavish portraits & rare photographs, author Debra Mancoff examines Jane Morris's "strange beauty" within the context of Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic ideals & Victorian standards of fashion. The chronological narrative traces Morris's rise from an eighteen-year-old working-class Oxford girl to a virtual "supermodel" for the Pre-Raphaelites, focusing in particular on her relationships with artist-designer William Morris, whom she married in 1859, & Rossetti, with whom she shared a lifelong romance. Part biography, part art history, & part cultural study, Jane Morris: The Pre-Raphaelite Model of Beauty is an intriguing, informed account of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood & the woman whose oft-painted image became an icon of romantic beauty.Mancoff, Debra N. is the author of 'Jane Morris The Pre-Raphaelite Model of Beauty' with ISBN 9780764913372 and ISBN 0764913379.