Jane Morris Jane Morris Jane Morris (née Jane Burden; 19 October 1839 – 26 January 1914) was an embroiderer and English artists' model who embodied the Pre-Raphaelite ideal of beauty. She was a model and muse to William Morris (1834–1896), the English textile designer, poet, novelist, translator, and socialist activist, whom she later married, and to Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Jane Burden was born in Oxford, the daughter of a stableman, Robert Burden, and his wife Ann Maizey, who was a laundress. At the time of her birth, her parents were living at St Helen's Passage, in the parish of St Peter-in-the-East, off
Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1865 and was immediately struck by her beauty. She agreed to sit for him the following day, but failed to arrive. He spotted her again weeks later, jumped from the cab he was in and persuaded her to go straight to his studio. He paid her a weekly fee to sit for him exclusively, afraid that other artists might employ her. They shared a lasting bond; after Rossetti's death Wilding was said to have travelled regularly to place a wreath on his grave. Jane Morris, whom Rossetti had used as a model for the Oxford Union murals he painted