Jane Morris standing, in marquee

As with a number of photographs in the Jane Morris series, at least three copies of this pose survive, this one in the Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery, the other two in the Victoria and Albert Museum's Album of Portraits of Mrs. William Morris (Jane Burden). Posed by Rossetti, 1865 .

This picture is one of the most remarkable in the series, and the two prints preserved in the Victoria and Albert album make a nice contrast. Mrs. Morris is posed outdoors against the backdrop of a billowing canopy, with her hands clasped at her midriff. She is turned facing the camera, though she looks away to the right. Like one of the V & A prints, this is a cropped down version of the original negative composition, which can be seen, however, in the other V & A print. The latter is far the more dramatic and dynamic image, though the cropped version is also interesting and effective, not least because of certain ghostly internal “framing” effects (these appear on several other of the pictures in the series). The Birmingham print, which is a replica of the cropped version, does not display this framing effect.

This particular print is marked in an unknown hand: “Copy by Emery Walker” This copy was probably made in the 1890s.

This pose is very close in style to another pose also composed outdoors in the marquee.

• Bartram, Pre-Raphaelite Photography , 38-40.
• Bartram, The Pre-Raphaelite Camera , Chapters 5-6.
• DGR 1828-1882: An Exhibition [Tokyo 1990], 187 (no. 153).