Woman with a Fan

This finished portrait of Fanny Cornforth was perhaps initially created as a picture intended to illustrate some subject. The inset scroll that carries the date seems to have been placed there for some text or other. As it stands, however, it is a portrait only, and DGR made a present of it to Fanny. “It is surely identifiable as the ‘portrait’ whose sale. . .Rossetti was trying to arrange on [Fanny's] behalf in the winter of 1872-1873”. Charles Augustus Howell, who was acting as agent in these negotiations, told DGR in a letter that “her portrait is truly splendid but it is so full of individuality, such a very living portrait, that I fear I shall never be able to sell it as a picture” (see Wildman, Visions of Love and Life, 266 ).