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

Bonhams, 5 March 2002, lot 57;
Private collection

The sheet appears to be sound; very slightly discoloured otherwise it appears in very good overall condition, ready to hang. Presented in a reeded gilt plaster frame with a green mount; unexamined out of frame.
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‘He saw in the liveliness of young women the optimism of his own youth, which through experience he knew would prove ephemeral.’

BURNE-JONES
Martin Harrison & Bill Waters, 1973, p.161

Throughout his life Burne-Jones loved the company of women, perhaps finding in their tenderness towards him the motherly and sisterly love that he had never had but always craved. In later life he established close, tender, intimate but platonic relationships with various young women who were inspiration for his art and philosophy on life. His muses included Helen Mary Gaskell and her daughter Amy, Mary Gladstone, Frances Stanhope and Cicely and Frances Horner. Most of the women with whom Burne-Jones conducted his passionately-worded correspondence were of a similar type – slender, beautiful, aristocratic and wealthy but with some sadness or instability in their lives that gave them the fragility that he found irresistible. These women’s faces gaze out from his last masterpieces and one of the most prominent of these was Olive Maxse.

Olive Hermione Maxse (1866-1955) was the elder daughter of Burne-Jones’ friend Cecilia Steele Maxse, daughter of a retired Indian Army colonel. In 1862 Cecilia married Admiral Frederick Augustus Maxse (1833-1900), a naval officer and radical, after he followed the nineteen-year-old home from the Crystal Palace and asked her parents for her hand in marriage. The union was not a happy one and their daughter wrote ‘My mother and father were wholly incompatible, and the real miracle was not that they separated, but that they had stayed together for sixteen years.’  (Milner, p.1)

After the separation of her parents in 1877 Olive grew up under the tutelage of a succession of governesses. Her brothers were Sir (Frederick) Ivor Maxse (1862-1958), who became a leading First World War general and Leopold James Maxse (1864-1932), who rose to fame as a prominent journalist, subsequently owning and editing the National Review. Her sister Violet (1872-1958) first married Lord Edward Herbert Gascoyne-Cecil (1897-1918), and secondly Sir Alfred Milner, later Viscount Milner (1854-1925). Like their mother, both Maxse sisters became close friends of Burne-Jones' who indulged their youthful whims with avuncular advice and his famous good-humour and encouraged their artistic pursuits. Olive was a particularly proficient musician. In a typical response by Burne-Jones to one of Olive’s letters, he wrote; 'A certain kind of silly rubbish has always helped me, deep down, as we are all face to face with enough solemnity - we can guess that much of each other with certainty even if we know nothing - so I shall be silly till you want me to be sad and then you shall have all the sadness that is in me' (Harris & Waters, loc. cit.).

Between 1893 and 1894 Olive studied the piano in Paris whilst Violet studied drawing and Burne-Jones was clearly pleased when Olive reported that a number of her sister’s fellow students at the Académie Julian had suggested that her features resembled those of a Burne-Jones model. He replied: 'Those students at Julian's conceived a high ideal of me if they think they are at all like any heads I paint - I hope it's a little true - for I think you beautiful - and an old artist may tell a young girl that without hurt or blame - and when you come back I shall claim my privilege of drawing from you' (Harris & Waters, loc. cit.).

Burne-Jones drawings demonstrate his sensitivity and mastery and although they have a distinctive style they are always individual and perceptive. ‘These late drawings show the benefit of a lifetime’s experience in the handling of the media. Textures produced by charcoal, crayon, pencil and pastel are all recognised and used for their intrinsic characteristics. His technique varies with each one, but they all show an acute sensitivity to the positioning of a line or mass within the framework of paper.’ (Harris & Waters, loc. cit.).

There is a similar drawing of Olive dated 1895 at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, inscribed by the artist as being for The Sirens (Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida), a picture begun in the 1870s but incomplete at the time of Burne-Jones death almost three decades later. Another drawing is dated 1896 and inscribed 'AVALON' identifying it as a study for one of the queens gathered around the dying king in The Last Sleep of Arthur (Museo de Arte at Ponce, Puerto Rico). In both paintings Burne-Jones immortalised the young women who had become so important to him and by associating himself with Arthur perpetually attended by his female guardian and the mariner eternally in the thrall of the sirens.