Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt., A.R.A., R.W.S

Mrs Margaret McKail (nee Burne-Jones), the artist's daughter;
Purchased from Louis Meier, London c.1954

One of these drawings appears to relate to the slumbering figures of the knights in The Prince Enters the Briar Wood, one of Burne-Jones' series of paintings of Perrault's story of The Sleeping Beauty. The poses are closest to those found in an unfinished oil sketch for the figures (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) in which the knights are also naked. This oil sketch appears to predate the version of the painting from 1871-3 (Museo de Ponce, Puerto Rico) and the famous version painted as part of the decoration for Lord Faringdon completed in 1890 (Buscot Park, Oxfordshire). The style of the present drawing makes it likely that it was made early in the process of devising the composition, around 1870 or before.

The pose of the figure in the other drawing is close to that of one of the slumped female servants in another of the Briar Rose paintings, The Garden Court.  However it also bears a resemblance to the figure of the dead gorgon Medusa in The Death of Medusa (Staatsgalerie Stuttgart). In a more general sense, the tension of the musculature of the androgynous figure is close to the drawings made c.1873 for Souls on the Banks of the River Styx which demonstrate Burne-Jones' study of the art of Michelangelo.