Alexa Wilding, the subject of this drawing posed for many of Gabriel Dante Rossetti’s paintings in the 1870s. The artist and model’s relationship (unusually for Rossetti) remained entirely professional and Rossetti paid for a retaining fee to ensure she did not sit for any other artist. Nethertheless, his obsession with Jane Morris, with whom he had an affair in the 1870s meant other models were often endowed with her distinctive features- as here, where the mouth is more reminscent of Jane Morris that Alexa Wilding.
