Woman with a Fan

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Date: 1870

Materials: Coloured chalks; in original frame

One of the artist's final likenesses of Fanny Cornforth, this spectacular drawing may have been meant as a subject picture, but instead was probably given to the sitter out of affection and gratitude.

From 1871, Rossetti was emotionally pre-occupied with Jane Morris, and Fanny receded from the picture, marrying a widower, John Schott. They became proprietors of the Rose Tavern in Jermyn Street. She and her husband amassed a large number of Rossetti's drawings, almost all of which are now in the Birmingham collection, having been acquired by Charles Fairfax Murray before Fanny's death in 1905.