Nov 03, 2021 - Sale 2586

Sale 2586 - Lot 713

Price Realized: $ 15,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
EDWARD BURNE-JONES
(Birmingham 1833-1898 London)
Head of a Woman (Study for "The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon").

Pencil on paper, 1885. 241x141 mm; 9 1/2x5 1/2 inches. Initialed and dated in pencil, lower left recto.

Provenance: Major C. S. Goldman, Isle of Wight; John Monck, London; with H. Shickman Gallery, New York, 1969; Robert and Helen Mandelbaum, New York; thence by descent, private collection, New York.

Exhibited: "British Art from the Collection of Robert and Helen Mandelbaum," Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, October 6-29, 1978 and Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, November 10-Decenber 20, 1978, catalogue number 5.

This drawing is a study for the woman at Arthur's feet, playing a stringed instrument, in Burne-Jones's magnum opus oil painting The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon, circa 1891-98, now in the collection of Ponce Museum of Art in Puerto Rico. Burne-Jones repeated this model in many of his works, notably the portrait of Nimuë in The Beguiling of Merlin, 1873, now in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, National Museums Liverpool.