Marie Stillman, née Spartali (1844-1927)

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.