SIR EDWARD COLEY BURNE-JONES, BT., A.R.A., R.W.S. | STUDY FOR THE HEAD OF HOPE

Arthur Crossland, Heaton Manor, Frinzinghall, Bradford;

Maas Gallery, London;

Thomas William Fine Art, London

London, Maas Gallery, Pre-Raphaelites to Post-Impressionists, 1965, no.9;

New York, Shepherd Gallery, English Romantic Art 1840-1920, Pre-Raphaelites, Academics, Symbolists - Drawings, Watercolours, Graphics, Paintings, 1994, no.16

This drawing is a study for the head of the allegorical figure of Hope, painted in 1896 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). This composition, in which a girl is seen standing in a prison cell, chained by the ankles but reaching up to the sky which has miraculously penetrated the heavily barred window, was conceived in 1871 for a stained-glass window in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. A watercolour version (Dunedin Art Gallery, New Zealand), followed, being one of four pictures of the Virtues which Burne-Jones showed at the inaugural exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877. There is also a related watercolour entitled If Hope Were Not, Heart Should Break (sold in these rooms, 14 July 2016, lot 16).