This is one of the two earliest known DGR drawings of Jane Burden, the woman who would become the wife of William Morris and
subsequently DGR's lover. (The other is the
Jane Burden came into the orbit of DGR and his friends in late September or early October 1857 while the Oxford murals project was a central preoccupation. Ned Jones met her and her sister as they were leaving the theatre in Drury Lane and Jane was persuaded to sit as a model for the group. Initially, through October 1857, she modelled almost exclusively for DGR. The first important picture for which she is clearly the model is
Jane and Morris were married in April 1859 and they had two children, Jenny (born in 1861) and May (born in 1862). From that point their marriage began to show signs of mutual estrangement. It appears that the liaison of DGR and Jane did not begin
until 1866 or perhaps 1867, although in 1865 she came to Cheyne Walk to pose for the famous series of
DGR's single most elaborate act of homage to Jane Morris was the planned
The drawing was made while DGR and his friends were still working on the Oxford Union murals. This was a drawing for part of the design for
DGR's aborted mural Marsh 122-123), and certainly the date of the drawing is a year later than the period when he (at least) began to work on the picture. Still, both Morris and DGR associated Jane with Guenevere from very early in their meeting with her.