Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones 1833-1898
The Garland Portrait, 1895
Red chalk, heightened with black and white chalk, on sanguine paper
39.4 x 28.9 cm., 15½ x 11 3/8 in.
Signed with initials and dated 'E B-J/1895' (lower right)
WB4718
Copyright The Artist
Formerly catalogued as a Portrait of Lady Gwendolen Gascoyne-Cecil when sold at Christie's in 2015, the Edward Burne-Jones catalogue raisonne suggests this does not have her likeness, and that it...
Formerly catalogued as a Portrait of Lady Gwendolen Gascoyne-Cecil when sold at Christie's in 2015, the Edward Burne-Jones catalogue raisonne suggests this does not have her likeness, and that it could be of Olive Maxse.
'Gwendolen Gascoyne-Cecil was the second daughter of the Prime Minister. She wrote his biography and never married. Contemporary sources list the drawing as ‘Study on brown paper’ and ‘Study for the Garland’, and the photograph attached of her at around the time of the drawing, when she was 35, shows that she looks nothing like this portrait. It would seem more likely that Burne-Jones gave her the drawing, but it was not of her, as was often his practice.'
'Gwendolen Gascoyne-Cecil was the second daughter of the Prime Minister. She wrote his biography and never married. Contemporary sources list the drawing as ‘Study on brown paper’ and ‘Study for the Garland’, and the photograph attached of her at around the time of the drawing, when she was 35, shows that she looks nothing like this portrait. It would seem more likely that Burne-Jones gave her the drawing, but it was not of her, as was often his practice.'
Provenance
Lady Gwendolen Gascoyne-Cecil, 1895-1945;Mrs Anne Mary Wilson (Née Anne Mary Gascoyne Cecil), 1945-2015;
Christie's, London, 16 December 2015, lot 107;
Private Collection (purchased from the above)
Literature
Harry (Henry) Wilson, The Architectural Review: For the Artist & Craftsman, Vol. I, May 1897, illus. p. 225;T. Martin Wood, The Drawings of Sir Edward Burne-Jones (Drawings of the Great Masters), 1907, illus. pl. XLII (as 'study on brown paper')
6
of
6
