THREAD William Morris, Jane Morris in Medieval Costume, 1861 -- While we're closed our curators are using social media to highlight some of their favourite objects in the order you'd see them if you were visiting the Gallery #wmgathome

We're now moving on to our Starting Out display, which explores Morris’s early influences, including the Pre-Raphaelite artists and the art critic John Ruskin.

William Morris met Jane Burden in 1857 and they married two years later. Morris was attracted to Jane’s statuesque and exotic beauty, and used her as the model for Helen of Troy in this design for a wall painting depicting the Trojan War.

While Jane is clearly recognisable in this drawing, it is more a study of historic dress than an attempt at portraiture; it is also an interesting example of the way in which Morris and his contemporaries recast classical figures in a medieval aesthetic.

Created early in their marriage, this drawing also hints at how Morris may have perceived Jane: as a beautiful canvas onto which he could project his idealised vision of the chivalric love of the Middle Ages.

Text by William Morris Gallery curator Roisin Inglesby