British Pictures
Past exhibition
Either Lady Evelyn Charteris or her sister-in-law, Lady Elcho, née Mary Constance Wyndham, later Countess of Wemyss and March
By descent to Lady Evelyn’s daughter, Lady Elcho’s niece, the Hon Mary Gertrude Vesey (Mrs Aubrey Herbert) in 1910 and thence by descent to
Lady Evelyn’s great-grandson, Bernard Dru
Maas Gallery 11834, 30/7/90
Private collection, London
Burne-Jones, Maas Gallery, 1992
Shepherd Gallery, New York, English Romantic Art 1840-1920: Pre-Raphaelites, Academics, Symbolists... 1994, no 17 (?)
Maas Gallery, Victorian Pictures, 1996, no 12
Burne-Jones Catalogue Raisonné
This drawing, in gold crayon and watercolour on paper prepared with terracotta gouache, is typical of both Burne-Jones’s experimental method and his use of repeated motifs. Bill Waters has argued that a studio assistant may also have been involved in its making. If the date of 1876 on the label on the back is correct, then it may be as much as ten years later than an unsigned red chalk drawing – dated by Bill Waters to the mid 1860s – of similar figures looking over a balcony. The present picture was owned by the Charteris family: either Mary, Lady Elcho or her sister-in-law Lady Evelyn Charteris, and thence by descent. Lady Elcho was a particularly close friend of Georgiana, the artist’s wife. There are many extant letters to her from both Burne-Joneses in the Stanway House Collection, written between 1877 and 1896. This drawing, numbered 52 on the back, was in the same collection with another initialled drawing titled Luna, about the same size but in silver crayon on prepared blue paper, labelled and numbered 51 in the same hand.
