In the Spring of 1871, Morris and Rossetti took joint tenancy of Kelmscott Manor, a sixteenth-century manor house by the Thames in Oxfordshire. Morris then went on an extended trip to Iceland, leaving his wife Jane and Rossetti to spend the summer there together. Several paintings of her were begun then, including the small oil 'Water Willow' (Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington), in which she holds branches of willow, a symbol of sorrow, with the house, church and river at Kelmscott in the background. In this study, Jane bears an even more soulful expression, and carries, with no little irony, a pansy - conventionally a token of fidelity and rembrance.