Figure Study of a nude female; for a Gorgon in the painting 'The Death of Medusa'

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt ARA (1833-1898)

Signedwith initials 'EBJ' and dated '1876'

Verso: drapery studies

Pencil on white paper

10 1/4 x 6 3/4 inches, 26 x 17 cm

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Her constant woeful prayer was heard at last,
For now behind her unseen Perseus passed,
And silently whirled the great sword around;
And when it fell, she fell upon the ground,
And felt no more of all her bitter pain.

Commentary by Hilary Morgan

In 1875 Arthur Balfour commissioned Burne-Jones to execute a series ofdecorations for the music room of his house, 4 Carlton Gardens. Burne-Jones turned to William Morris's Earthly Paradise, a series of poems which he had begun to illustrate when they were composed in the late 1860s and which inspired many of his later paintings and designs. He selected The Doom of King Acrisius, a retelling of the Perseus legend. The resulting Perseus Series (Staatsgalerle Stuttgart and Southampton Art Gallery) became one of the artist's greatest achievements, for he became deeply involved in the subject - to the detriment of Balfour's decorative scheme which remained unfinished.

The present drawing, dated 1876, relates to Burne-Jones's first conception of the scheme as a highly styllsed and decorative series of canvases, integrated with their setting by means of acanthus borders designed by Morris & Co. The figure represents one of the Gorgons in distress at the death of her sister Medusa, and the decorative quality is empliasised by the profile pose of the figure.

The first plan for the scheme is recorded in a series of gouache modelli in the Tate Gallery which reveal that this figure was to be draped in the stylised manner of the Greek vase paintings which Burne-Jones studied in preparation for his paintings. He wrote in the summer of 1875 'I have worked at the British Museum lately looking up all the most ancient ways of portraying Medusa, and they are few but very interesting'. However, the drawing itself, an excellent example of Burne-jones's 'quattrocento' pencil style from the mid 1870s, shows a great interest in the modelling of the figure. He would probably have been unable to realise a very stylised work on a large scale and in the final canvas adopted a more dynamic and less decorative pose.

This drawing was reproduced as a Hollyer photograph (Witt Library). There are two further preliminary studies for the figure, in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (sketchbook (085 22r)) and in a private collection.

References

Burne-Jones, G. Memorials of Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Volume 2. London: Macmillan, 1904.

Harrison, Martin, and Waters, Bill. Burne-Jones. Reproduced. London: Jenkins & Barrie, 1973.

Locherm, Kurt. Der Perseus-Zyklus von Edward Burne-Jones. Stuttgart: Staatsgaleric, 1973.

Morgan, Hilary and Nahum, Peter. Burne-Jones, The Pre-Raphaelites and Their Century. London: Peter Nahum, 1989. Catalogue number 56.

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Last modified 2 January 2002