Fanny Cornforth (born Sarah Cox; 3 January 1835 – 24 February 1909) was an English artist's model, and the mistress and muse of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

Cornforth, born Sarah Cox, on 3 January 1835, at Steyning, Sussex, was the daughter of Jane, née Woolgar (bap.

[3] Three months after Rossetti's wedding, Cornforth married mechanic Timothy Hughes, but the relationship was short lived.

[8] Rossetti paid for a house for her nearby, writing to her "You are the only person whom it is my duty to provide for, and you may be sure I should do my utmost as long as there was a breath in my body or a penny in my purse.

By 1905 she was apparently suffering from dementia, and was being cared for by her sister-in-law, the actress Rosa Villiers, who put her in the Workhouse in West Sussex against her will.

[8] On 30 March 1907 she was admitted to the West Sussex County Lunatic Asylum, the records of which state that she was suffering from "senile mania, confusion, weak-mindedness and an inability to sustain a rational conversation, a poor memory and sleeplessness."

[8] The discovery about her final days was first made at West Sussex Record Office by Christopher Whittick, the biographer of Fanny Cornforth for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB).

[9] Shortly afterwards, Kirsty Stonell Walker, the author of Stunner: The Fall and Rise of Fanny Cornforth, found similar.

These include: A small circular oil painting, 93⁄4 inches in diameter, made in 1862 by Rossetti and now at the Royal Academy, London, is unusual in that it presents a straightforward portrait of Cornforth.

Rossetti substituted[11] the features of another model, Alexa Wilding for Fanny Cornforth in Lady Lilith (1864–1868).

A few fine finished coloured chalk portraits include one drawn in 1874 on pale green paper, 22 x 16 in.