Large-scale Rossetti work on show for first time in  Birmingham

A previously unseen large-scale pastel drawing of Mnemosyne by Dante Gabriel Rossetti will go on show for the first time in a major new exhibition The Poetry of Drawing which opens at Birmingham Museum and Gallery on January 29. 2011.

The exhibition will run until May 15, before touring to Sydney, Australia, next summer.

Mnemosyne depicts Jane Morris, wife of the designer William Morris and Rossetti’s most important muse in the last decade of his life. Rossetti began work on the painting (now in Delaware Art Museum in the US) in 1876 and completed in 1881, the year before his death.

Founded in 1951, the Birmingham Museum of Art has one of the finest collections in southeast England, supported by a strong educational programme designed to make the arts come alive for children and adults.

More than 24,000 objects represent a rich panorama of cultures, including Asian, European, American, African, Pre-Columbian, and Native American.

Highlights include the mu-seum’s collection of Asian art, considered the finest and most comprehensive in southeast England, and its collection of Vietnamese ceramics, one of the finest in the world. There are also a remarkable Kress collection of Renaissance and Baroque paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts from the late 13th century to the 1750s; a collection of 18th century European decorative arts, which includes superior examples of English ceramics and French furniture and a world-renowned collection of Wedgwood, the largest outside of England.