Kelmscott Manor relationship with its setting, especially its garden. The Manor is featured in Morris' work "News from Nowhere". It also appears in the background of "Water Willow", a portrait of his wife, Jane Morris, painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1871. After William Morris's death in 1896, the Manor continued to be occupied by his widow, Jane Morris (who purchased it in 1913) and later, his daughters. May Morris died in 1938 and bequeathed the house to Oxford University, on the basis the contents were preserved and the public were granted access. The University were unwilling to preserve the house as
Dante Gabriel Rossetti the Brotherhood's formation in 1848, their pieces of art included subjects of noble or religious disposition. Their aim was to communicate a message of "moral reform" through the style of their works, exhibiting a "truth to nature". Specifically in Rossetti's "Hand and Soul," written in 1849, he displays his main character Chiaro as an artist with spiritual inclinations. In the text, Chiaro's spirit appears before him in the form of a woman who instructs him to "set thine hand and thy soul to serve man with God." The Rossetti Archive defines this text as "Rossetti's way of constellating his commitments