COVE

‘Here Proserpina was playing in a glade and picking flowers, […] when, in a trice, Haides saw her, loved her, carried her away’
Mrs Morris (1873), or Study for Proserpine, in pencil on paper shows Jane Morris in idle contemplation. The sketch is dated from Kelmscott Manor (the house co-rented by the Morrises and Rossetti), the primary location in which Rossetti and Morris conducted their affair away from the gaze of London society. Like the myth, Rossetti carried away his Proserpine through flowers, fields and lakes just as Hades had – but instead of to the Underworld, to the Oxfordshire countryside.

Composition study, 1873 - pencil on paper
Dimensions: 8 3/4 x 6 3/4 in.