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22a
STUDY for THE MUSICIAN ATTENDANTS for KING COPHETUA AND THE
BEGGAR MAID.
c. 1883
SIR
EDWARD COLEY BURNE-JONES, Bt.
1833-1898
Red
chalk, 22.7 x 14.1 (8.25 x 5.5)
Provenance:
probably 2nd Studio sale, Christie's 5 June 1919 (30, ten
in five frames), bought Turner for 5gns.; Sir Edmund Davis,
sale Christie's May 15 1942 (24 with two others), bought Croal
Thompson for 36 gns; Barbizon House; Cecil French.
Exhibited:
Fulham 1967 (20); Sheffield 1971 (156); Fulham 1983 (12).
Recto: life drawings of the head and shoulders of two boy
choristers sharing music; the boy on the left leans his head
towards the boy on the right. Below is a further study of
the right hand boy.
Verso:
a nude study for the body of the right hand chorister behind
a pierced balustrade.
This
study and that below are preliminary drawings for one of Burne-Jones's
most famous oil paintings, King Cophetua and the Beggar
Maid, 1884 (293.4 x 135.9), in the Tate Gallery, London.
The Tate also owns a small oil (72.6 x 63.5) of the same subject
dated 1862. A car-toon for the painting is in Birmingham City
Art Gallery.
Cophetua
was a mythical African King who, despite his great wealth
and misogyny, fell in love with Penelophon, a beggar maid.
The
tale was included in Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient
English Poetry, a collection of Elizabethan ballads which
was popular with Burne-Jones, Rossetti and Morris in the early
1860s. Percy found this particular story in Richard Johnson's
Crowne Garland of Goulden Roses of 1612, titled Song
of a Beggar and King. The theme of love triumphing over
worldly considerations appealed both to the rebellious and
romantic ethos of the Pre-Raphaelites. The subject was also
used by Tennyson for The Beggar Maid which was illustrated
by Holman Hunt in Moxon's edition of Poems by Alfred Tennyson,
1857.
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