A CHALK drawing of an Oxford beauty has fetched £602,500 when it went under the hammer this evening.
The picture of nineteenth century Oxford beauty Jane Morris was once owned by world-famous matchstick men artist L.S Lowry.
It was auctioned off at Christie's in London with an estimate of £300,000 and £500,000.
The picture was drawn by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in about 1870 when lover Oxford-born Jane Morris was in her thirties.
Jane Morris was the daughter of Oxford stablehand Robert Burden and laundress Ann Maizey and was born in Oxford on October 19, 1839.
She lived in St Helen’s Passage, off Holywell Street, where there is a commemorative blue plaque put up for her there.
Ms Morris went on to become on of the most famous faces in Victorian art and features in several painting and drawings by Rossetti including Pandora, Proserpine and The Day Dream.
Ms Morris was 74 when she passed away on January 26, 1914, and is buried at St George's church in Kelmscott.
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