Lot 26: Marie Stillman, née Spartali (1844-1927)

Marie Stillman, née Spartali (1844-1927)
A lady in the garden at Kelmscott Manor, Gloucestershire
with inscription 'A Study of/Kelmscott Manor/by Marie Stillman' (on the reverse)
pencil and watercolour heightened with bodycolour, on Whatman watercolour board, unframed
10 5/8 x 14½ in. (27 x 36.8 cm.)

William Michael Rossetti and by descent in his family to the present owner.

Marie Stillman made many studies of Kelmscott Manor, the sleepy old Cotswold house on the upper Thames of which William Morris and D.G. Rossetti became joint tenants in 1871, and where Rossetti and Jane Morris enjoyed the happiest phase of their liaison during the next few years. An example almost identical to the present watercolour is at Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton (illustrated in John Christian, 'Marie Spartali: Pre-Raphaelite Beauty', Antique Collector, March 1984, p. 46, fig. 7). Another was exhibited at the New Gallery in 1905.