Mrs. William Morris The Blue Silk Dress Dante Gabriel Rossetti 1 1868
Jane Burden Morris <artist/> <location/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnpictorial> <citnmythic> <name/> <culture/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnmythic> <citnhistorical> <event/> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnhistorical> <citnautobiographical> <name/> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnautobiographical> <citnscenic> <place/> <date/> <bibl/> <note/> </citnscenic> </listcitn> </source> <commentaries> <head>Commentary</head> <section type="intro"> <head>Introduction</head> <p><!-- Find commentary for associated pictures through “Search for Related Images.” --> Though not technically a double work, the painting is connected to many of DGR's most central writings and pictures. The all but explicit connection to <xref doc="a.1-1868.s212.raw"> <title level="wrk">“The Portrait” is made via the Latin verse inscription that DGR composed for the painting. From that nexus a host of other relations proliferates, as the scholarly commentary shows. “The Portrait” , for example, has been the center of a long controversy about the specific painting to be associated with the sonnet so titled. But the truth is that DGR's whole aesthetic life was a pursuit of this ideal image of Beauty. Mrs. Morris came ultimately to represent for him perhaps the closest incarnation that he had ever known of that ideal form. The pictures most closely related to this one are <hi rend="i">Reverie</hi> , <hi rend="i">La Pia de' Tolomei</hi> , <hi rend="i">Aurea Catena</hi> , <hi rend="i">The Portrait</hi> , and <hi rend="i">Mariana</hi> , all of which were being executed about the same time.

The relation to the last of those pictures has sometimes led commentators to see all these pictures and associated poems as DGR's critical reflections on Jane Morris's marital situation. The interpretation has a Freudian validity. But we want to recall as well the entire neo-platonic tradition that was more specifically in DGR's mind, and that was the initiating mechaniism and framework for his work from the very first, as the signature example of <hi rend="i">The Blessed Damozel</hi> shows.

See also the commentary for the drawing of October 1868.

Textual History: Composition

Textual History: Revision

The Latin verse text inscribed along the top of this picture was copied out by DGR in one of his notebooks. WMR printed it in his 1911 edition.

Production History

The picture was being worked on in the summer of 1868 (see Fredeman, Correspondence , 68. 110 , DGR's letter to Alice Boyd of 24 July 1868).

Reception

Iconographic

Pictorial

Historical

Literary

Translation

Autobiographical

Bibliographic

Benedetti, <hi rend="i">Dante Gabriel Rossetti</hi> , 273. Surtees, <hi rend="i">A Catalogue Raisonné</hi> , vol. 1, 176 (no. 372).

Kelmscott Manor oil painting Dante Gabriele Rossetti con 107 Illustrazioni Elena Rossetti Angeli 1906 0 Masterpieces of D. G. Rossetti (1828-1882): Sixty Reproductions of Photographs from the Original Oil-paintings 1923 0 Dante Gabriel Rossetti Ernest Radford 1905 0 Mrs. William Morris DGR 1868 AD 1868 oil 8 Mrs. William Morris DGR 1868 1868 crayon 1 Mrs. William Morris [print] DGR 1868-1913 (circa) Charcoal grey and beige print, mounted on beige board 1 Mrs. William Morris [print] DGR 1870-1913 (circa) 1868 Charcoal/brown and cream print, not mounted 1 Mrs. William Morris [print] DGR 1855-1913 (circa) Charcoal/brown and cream print, mounted on beige board 1