Dante Gabriel Rossetti Heaven. Around 1860, Rossetti returned to oil painting, abandoning the dense medieval compositions of the 1850s in favour of powerful close-up images of women in flat pictorial spaces characterised by dense colour. These paintings became a major influence on the development of the European Symbolist movement. In them, Rossetti's depiction of women became almost obsessively stylised. He portrayed his new lover Fanny Cornforth as the epitome of physical eroticism, whilst Jane Burden, the wife of his business partner William Morris, was glamorised as an ethereal goddess. "As in Rossetti's previous reforms, the new kind of subject appeared in the context
The Mistress and the Maids The Mistress and the Maids "The Mistress and the Maids" was the second episode of the first series of the British television series, "Upstairs, Downstairs". The episode is set in 1904. In June 1904, Richard Bellamy commissions Guthrie Scone, a Bohemian artist, to paint his wife. Lady Marjorie duly poses for Scone and Sarah is sent to deliver Lady Marjorie's dresses to his studio. Soon Scone simultaneously paints a nude portrait of Sarah and (an imagined) Rose, whom he paints from Sarah's descriptions. Both paintings are exhibited together as "The Mistress and the Maids" at the Royal Academy causing a