The Wayward Muse

Jane Burden (1858) by William Morris

"Miss Burden," Morris said. He had to say it several times before she emerged from her daydream. Jane felt very cross at being interrupted. When she turned to Morris, she saw an expression in his hazel eyes the frightened her. Then she realized that he had turned his canvas around to face her. For the first time she saw the work he had been laboring over all of these weeks. The figure, only in the vaguest sense her size and shape, was crosshatched mess. The background was muddied with wide angry brushstrokes the color of silt and loam. The bottom of the canvas was still startlingly white, and on it Morris had written, in midnight blue: "I cannot paint you, but I love you."

(excerto do livro The Wayward Muse de Elizabeth Hickey)