Study for

Head Study for "the Passing of Venus"

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

Pencil on brown paper

13 1/4 x 9 1/4 inches, 35 x 23.5 centimetres.

[The head is a study for one of ther female attendants who appears in the finished work at far left under Venus's canopy.]

"Selecting a model was for Burne-Jones an act of primary importance; when he had found a face that suited him he would invariably use the features to express his ideas in a number of pictures that we was working on simultaneously."

The model in this drawing also appears in The Sirens, Arthur in Avalon, and The Car of Love and in all probability is Bessie Keene, who sat for a painting Vesperina Quies in 1893 (Waters, p. 60).