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9
GIRL'S HEAD : A FANTASY 1897
SIR
EDWARD COLEY BURNE-JONES, Bt.
1833-1898
Black
chalk, bodycolour and gold on purple washed paper, 34.3 x
24.1 (13.5 x 9.5)
Signed
and dated, E B J 1897, in gold, vertically in formalised foliage
(lower left).
Provenance:
probably 2nd Studio sale, Christie's, 5 June 1919 (134), Head
of a Girl, gold on pink paper, bt. Earle for 3gns: Cecil
French.
Exhibited:
Fulham 1967 (36); Fulham 1983 (21).
Literature:
Harrison and Waters, col. pl.45, opp. p.153.
A
profile head and shoulders portrait of a pensive young woman
facing left, her hair garlanded with formalised green foliage.
This
drawing is very closely related to the head of A Zithern
Player, 1896 (34.9 x 19.9) in the Tate Gallery, London,
in black, bronze and gold ink on dark brown washed paper,
reproduced in Ironside and Gere, pl.87.
The
same technique is also used for Head of a Woman (32.1
x 21.9) in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, in black and white
chalk and gold paint on purple washed paper, which the Museum
dates as c.1890 but which is probably later. It is among a
group of late drawings given to Helen Mary Gaskell, with whom
Burne-Jones was infatuated from 1892.
Two
further related drawings, in gold on purple washed paper,
A Woman's Head in profile to the right, 1896 (35.6
x 25) and A Female Figure playing a Musical Instrument,
1897 (30.1 x 20.5) are in the British Museum (1901-4-17-20
and 1898-7-27-1).
John
Christian, in the 1975 Arts Council catalogue, writes that
some of these late drawings, with their distinctive technique,
were intended as designs for metal reliefs. Three, in beaten
silver, executed by R. Catterson-Smith were exhibited at the
5th Arts and Crafts Exhibition in 1896.
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