Is this the face that launched a thousand ships?

A chalk drawing of a nineteenth century Oxford beauty, which was owned and treasured by world-renowned matchstick men artist, L.S.Lowry, is set to fetch £400,000 at an auction tomorrow.

The picture, 'Portrait of Jane Morris' was drawn by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in or around 1870 when Oxford-born Jane Morris was in her early thirties and the lover of Rossetti.

She was the daughter of Oxford stablehand, Robert Burden and laundress Ann Maizey and was born on October 19, 1839.

She lived at St Helen's Passage, off Holywell Street which is commemorated by a blue plaque. 

From humble beginnings in Oxford, Jane Morris went on to become one of the most famous faces in Victorian art.

She features in several paintings and drawings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti - including 'Pandora, Proserpine' and 'The Day Dream' and the 1858 painting, 'Queen Guinevere', by William Morris, whom she married at St Michael ‘s church in Oxford on April 26,1859.

The Rossetti drawing of Jane Morris, expected to fetch between £300,000 and £500,000 at Christie’s in London on Thursday.

Lord of the musicals, Andrew Lloyd Webber is also an admirer of Rossetti's work and owns 18 of his pictures, including a chalk drawing of Jane Morris. 

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography said Jane Morris: "Read widely, became proficient in French and later Italian and was an accomplished pianist.

"Her manners and speech became refined to such an extent that contemporaries referred to her manners as ‘regal’ or ‘queenly.’

"Jane Morris was seventy four when she died on January 26,1914. She was buried at St George’s church, Kelmscott,Oxfordshire."