Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919), pencil study. Info verso and card attached. Sight 4 1/2" x 8", overall 14" x 16". Provenance: The Edward Herrmann Estate, Salisbury Connecticut.
CHARLES FAIRFAX MURRAY (BRITISH, 1849-1919) A male figure dressed in orange holding a palm; and A female figure dressed in... oil on panel 13 ½ x 7 ½ in. (34.3 x 19 cm.) (2)
Attributed to: Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919), study drawings. Sights 2" x 5" and 3" x 5 1/2", overall 10 1/2" x 10". Provenance: The Edward Herrmann Estate, Salisbury Connecticut.
CHARLES FAIRFAX-MURRAY (BRITISH 1849-1919)TWO PENCIL STUDIES OF HANDSPencil drawing24.5 x 16.5cm (9½ x 6¼ in.)Provenance:Faerber and Maison ltd, LondonTogether with a charcoal drawing by Franz Kruger (German 1797-1857) of two arms, provenance: Faerber and Maison ltd, London; and a French 19th century school drawing of two hands, provenance: Faerber and Maison ltd, London. Various sizes (4)
CHARLES FAIRFAX MURRAY (BRITISH 1849-1919) WOMEN BY THE FIREPLACE; WOMEN BY THE WELL pen and brush and blue ink each: 12.5 x 12.5cm; 5 x 5in each: 29.5 x 28cm; 11 1/2 x 11in (framed) (2) Property from an English Private Collection Provenance Mrs Rachel Ward (née Rothenstein; 1903-1989), Bakewell, Derbyshire Exhibited Sheffield, City Art Gallery, Local Heritage, 1970, nos. 8 & 9 (as Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones) *offered for sale without reserve
CHARLES FAIRFAX MURRAY (1849-1919) PORTRAIT OF GREAT UNCLE Inscribed upper left ~GREAT UNCLE~ Pencil on paper Image size: 20 x 25cm. (8 x 9¾in.) Framed size: 38 x 41cm. (15 x 16in.) Provenance: From the artist~s studio, thence by descent; The Maas Gallery, London. Charles Fairfax Murray was an artist, art connoisseur, collector and dealer who made important contributions to the South Kensington Museum~s collections during his lifetime. From 1869 to 1870, Murray worked as an assistant in Dante Gabriel Rossetti~s (1828-1882) workshop, and subsequently became associated with the second wave of the Pre-Raphaelites.
PORTRAIT OF GREAT UNCLE (PROBABLY ONE OF THE FAMILY OF JOHN D MURRAY, PUBLISHER AND FRIEND OF THE ARTIST inscribed upper left GREAT UNCLE pencil 20 x 25 cm. / 8 x 9¾in. Provenance: From the studio of the artist, thence by descent; The Maas Gallery, London
CHARLES FAIRFAX MURRAY (1849-1919) PORTRAIT OF GREAT UNCLE (PROBABLY ONE OF THE FAMILY OF JOHN D MURRAY, PUBLISHER AND FRIEND OF THE ARTIST) inscribed upper left GREAT UNCLE pencil 20 x 25 cm/8 x 9 3/4 in Provenance: From the studio of the artist, thence by descent; The Maas Gallery, London
* Murray (Charles Fairfax, 1849-1919). Tableau of figures encompassing a shrouded supine figure, 1870, brown wash heightened with white bodycolour, depicting a male figure in a shroud lying on a bier, encircled by a number of male and female figures in classical garb, demonstrating a variety of posture and gesture, signed with initials C.F.M. and dated on the back of a chair to the right hand side of the composition, sheet size 26 x 39cm (10.25 x 15.3ins), mounted on grey backing card Qty: (1)
Charles Fairfax Murray (London 1849-1919) The four seasons pencil and watercolour heightened with bodycolour, one heightened with gold 8 x 4¼ in. (20.3 x 10.8 cm.) each (4)
Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919) – English artist and collector “A Selection from the Collection of Drawings by the Old Masters Formed by C. Fairfax Murray.” London: Privately Printed, 1904. First edition. Unpaginated. Features 292 plates in black-and-white and sepia-tone based on artwork, and executed by MM Braun, Clement & Co., Paris and Dornach Approximately 150 artists are represented from various schools, including Parmigiano, Remembrandt, Giotto, Pollajuolo, Perugino, etc. Includes 23 page index Quatro (333 x 254 mm); in green cloth boarders with ¾ brown morocco and gilt decoration, spine has five raised bands and gilt, top edge gilt Very good condition Includes the important bookplate of Henry John and Minnie Caroline Bell on the front pastedown. Henry John Bell was a foremost collector at Doves Bindery during Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson’s lifetime (Tidcombe, p. 107). Charles Fairfax Murray (English, 1849-1919) Fairfax Murray is purported to have received an early artistic training from Richard Gainsborough DuPont before becoming a protégé of John Ruskin. Later, Fairfax Murray became very closely connected to the Pre-Raphaelite artists, assisting William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. During his travels to Italy for the Director of the National Gallery and other institutions, Fairfax Murray built his own Italian old masters collection. Fairfax Murray continued to collect various artists’ work and rare books throughout his life. When Fairfax Murray decided to sell about 1,500 old master drawings from his personal collection to the American Banker John Pierpont Morgan in 1909, the value was equivalent to over $5 million dollars today. John Pierpont Morgan’s collection later formed the Morgan Library & Museum. Condition Traces of shelf wear on the on the spine and back hinge. The corners are lightly with minor wear along the bottom edges. Very minor traces of foxing to the front and rear endpapers. Internally very bright and clean. Shipping costs excl. statutory VAT and plus 2,5% (+VAT) shipping insurance.
Charles Murray Foster (American, 1919) 4 Nude Studies, c. 1955, ink wash on paper. Ranging in size from: 6.5" x 4", 17 x 10 cm to 5.75" x 8.75", 15 x 22 cm.
Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919) Study of Pharamond and Azalais for 'Love is Enough or the Freeing of Pharamond' inscribed 'AZALAIS' and 'PHARAMON' (upper left and upper right, within a cartouche) brush and brown ink and grey wash, heightened with white on brown paper 14 7/8 x 10 ¾ in. (37.8 x 27.3 cm.)
CHARLES FAIRFAX MURRAY (1849-1919): FULL LENGTH FEMALE FIGURE STUDY Pencil on tissue-thin paper laid down on paper, unsigned. 12 1/4 x 6 1/2 in. (sheet), 21 x 14 1/2 in. (frame). Provenance: J.S. Maas & Co., Ltd, London. Estate of Holland Roberts Melson, Jr, New York
CHARLES FAIRFAX MURRAY (1849-1919): STUDY OF TWO FIGURES Pencil on paper, unsigned, with another study on the reverse, indistinctly inscribed and inscribed '32', with label from JS Maas & Co., Ltd., London. 4 1/2 x 5 1/2 in. (sheet), 10 3/4 x 11 1/2 in. (frame). Estate of Holland Roberts Melson, Jr, New York
CHARLES FAIRFAX MURRAY (1849-1919): FEMALE FIGURE STUDY Pencil on paper, unsigned, with partial studies in brown wash and pencil on the reverse, with label from JS Maas & Co., Ltd., London. 10 x 3 3/8 in. (sheet), 16 x 9 in. (frame). Estate of Holland Roberts Melson, Jr, New York
Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919), Portrait of E.W.T. Taunley, inscribed under the mount with name of sitter and dated 3.10.66, pencil sketch, unframed. 11.5cm by 9cm
CHARLES FAIRFAX MURRAY English, 1849-1919 "The Blind Beggar", an allegorical copy of Josephus Laurentius Dyckmans' "The Blind Beggar". Models are John Ruskin and Annie Miller. Provenance: Private Collection, Massachusetts. Oil on canvas, 20.5" x 18". Unframed.
Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919) Emma Sentance, 11.70., monogrammed, inscribed and dated, watercolour highlighted with white, 8 3/4" x 8 1/2", unframed and another portrait of a bearded gentleman seated, unsigned, 9" x 7", unframed (2).
PROPERTY OF AN INSTITUTION ST THEOPHILUS AND THE ANGEL: A LEGEND OF THE MARTYRDOM OF ST DOROTHEA signed and dated l.c.: E.B.J. 1863 watercolour and bodycolour 67 by 88cm., 26 by 34 1/2 in.
A portrait study of a young girl, Muriel E. Heseltine, aged 3 signed with monogram 'CFM' (lower left) and inscribed (upper right) red chalk drawing 31 x 24.5cm (12 1/4 x 9 1/2in).(oval)
A portrait study of a young girl, Muriel E. Heseltine, aged 3 signed with monogram 'CFM' (lower left) and inscribed (upper right) red chalk drawing 31 x 24.5cm (12 1/4 x 9 1/2in).(oval)
Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919) Four studies of a lady carrying something in her skirts Pencil 15cm x 23.5cm Exhibited: Pre- Raphaelites & Contemporaries, November 1962, no. 60, J S Maas & Co. Ltd. and Frederick Pegram (1870-1937) 'Head of a Woman' Pencil Signed lower right 22.5cm x 19.5cm Provenance: J S Maas & Co. Ltd. (2) (see illustration)
St Dominic with a false Rossetti monogram (lower right) watercolour with bodycolour 391/4 x 221/4 in. (99.7 x 56.5 cm.) NOTES In his monumental catalogue of William Morris's stained glass, The Stained Glass of William Morris and his Circle, 1974-5, the late A.C. Sewter listed a design of St Dominic by Burne-Jones as follows: 'DOMINIC, ST; with lily in book, and dog with torch and globe. Not identified BJ 576' (vol. 2, p. 290). The present watercolour clearly represents this image; the saint himself, the 'lily in book', the 'dog with torch' and the 'globe' (the large sphere cut off at the left-hand edge) are all present. The handling and technique are not typical of Burne-Jones's stained- glass cartoons, and it has been suggested that the executant might be Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919), who acted as Burne-Jones's studio assistant in the late 1860s and as William Morris's principal painter of stained glass in the early 1870s. However, there was a moment, also in the early 1870s, when Burne-Jones did use gouache in this way for his stained-glass cartoons. Compare, for example, the emblems of the four Evangelists designed in 1872 for the chapel at Castle Howard, the cartoons for which are in the Victoria and Albert Museum (illustrated in Sewter, vol. 1, pls. 364-7). Particularly striking is the similarity between the handling of the dewlap of the dog in our picture and that of the bull, the emblem of St Luke, in the Castle Howard cartoons. The hand responsible for these passages must surely have been one and the same. The false Rossetti monogram at lower right must have been added to deceive at a later date.
Technical Description William Morris (1834-1896) with the assistance of Sir Edward Burne-Jones, A.R.A., R.W.S. (1833-1898) and Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919); later work by Graily Hewitt (1864-1953) and Louise Powell (1882-1956) An Illuminated Manuscript of Virgil's Aeneid Generally regarded as Morris's calligraphic masterpiece, the Aeneid marks the climax of his attempt to revive the art of the illuminated manuscript in the early 1870s. The writing was begun by Morris and completed by Graily Hewitt. The illustration and decoration were begun by Morris and continued (but not completed) by Fairfax Murray and Mrs Powell. The miniatures and historiated initials were designed by Burne-Jones. 335-320 x 240mm. vi + 185 + vi vellum leaves including two endleaves stained purple, the text block mostly in gatherings of four, paginated 1-370, 28 lines written in black ink in roman minuscule between two verticals and 29 or 28 horizontals ruled in pencil, ruled area approx. 230 x 135mm, running headings throughout in capitals of blue on versos and burnished gold on rectos, some text capitals of gold, blue or occasionally silver up to p.72, guide letters for all others in pencil TWENTY-EIGHT ILLUMINATED FOLIATE INITIALS three- to eight-lines-high in bodycolour and burnished gold between p.43 and p.72, four unfinished, a further four drawn in pen-and-ink, FOUR LARGE HISTORIATED INITIALS in watercolour and one in grey wash, occasional pencil sketches, tracings and instructions for others up to p.166, HALF-PAGE MARGINAL MINIATURE, the opening folios of the twelve Books with HALF-PAGE MINIATURES C.140 X 135MM OR 135 X 140MM ABOVE ELEVEN LINES OF BURNISHED GOLD CAPITALS SURROUNDED BY FULL-PAGE FOLIATE BORDERS, the miniatures in watercolour, bodycolour and liquid gold, one border of gold leaf, three painted in bodycolour and eight drawn in pen-and-ink, one miniature not supplied (flaking to gold of foliate initial p.57 and unfinished initials on pp.57, 61 & 63). Contemporary renaissance-inspired panelled brown morocco by Leighton, ruled and stamped in blind with outer borders of rosettes and grouped annular dots within triple fillets, inner border with diaper interlace, the central panel with semicircles containing knotwork above and below a roundel with winged-dragon tools radiating from a central rosette, gilt turn-ins and board-edges, spine in six compartments top and bottom ruled and stamped in blind with rosettes in diaper (very slight rubbing at bands top and bottom of spine-joint, three tiny losses of surface at bottom corner of outer edge of upper cover), matching brown morocco box (box slightly scuffed at corners). The miniatures are as follows: p.1 Venus meets Aeneas on the shores of Libya and clothes him in mist to prevent his being hindered on the way to Carthage (Book I); with a full-page border of burnished gold grape-vines against a ground of unburnished gold leaf (Fig. 10) p.2 Juno in her chariot drawn by peacocks, before the city of Carthage (marginal miniature 152 x 60mm) (Fig. 17) p.29 Aeneas holds his son's hand and carries his father Anchises on his shoulders as they flee the ruins of Troy, Venus leading the way; behind them Aeneas's wife, Creusa, is engulfed by flames in the gateway of the city; to the right, Venus leads Aeneas by the hand (Book II); with a full-page acanthus and floral border in pen-and-ink p.86 Dido, maddened with grief at the departure of Aeneas, falls on his sword on the bed they shared, his breastplate still beside her; ribbons of flame from her pyre in the background (Book IV); with a full-page acanthus border in pen-and-ink (Fig. 11) p.113 The goddess Iris in disguise incites the women of Troy to burn the ships (Book V); with a full-page acanthus border in pen-and-ink (Fig. 13) p.146 Aeneas and the Cumaean Sibyl, armed with the golden bough, journey down to the Underworld and the banks of the river Styx (Book VI); with a full-page acanthus border in pen-and-ink p.181 Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus, stands in the courtyard of his palace, her hair ablaze as a portent of her own fame and the terrible war that will befall her people (Book VII); with a full-page painted border with two types of green foliage and berries against a dark red ground (Fig. 31) p.211 Venus presents Aeneas with a gift of arms fashioned by Vulcan (Book VIII); with a full-page border of white acanthus around blue foliage and white flowers against a dark red ground, each side with a central quatrefoil of pointill‚ -patterned burnished gold (Fig. 16) p.238 Turnus is visited by the goddess Iris, who instructs him to make a surprise attack on the Trojan camp (Book IX); with a full-page border of green vine leaves on plaited tendrils surrounded by curling tendrils with red berries and while flowers on a dark blue ground (Fig. 26) p.268 Aeneas, protected by his shield, strikes Mezentius in the thriat as he is thrown from his fallen horse (Book X); with a full-page acanthus border in pen-and-ink (Fig. 25) p.302 Aeneas displays the armour of Mezentius as a trophy of war (Book XI); with a full-page acanthus border in pen and ink p.336 Aeneas, having wounded Turnus, plunges his spear into his breast (Book XII); with a full page acanthus border in pen and ink The historiated initials are: p.26 Q, with Cupid in the form of Ascanius embracing Dido ( Quum venit aulaeis... Bk I, l.697) 100 x 110mm (fig. 15) p.44 H, with Cassandra chained and dragged from the temple of Minerva during the fall if Troy ( Heu mihi invitis... Bk II, l.402) 90 x 60mm (Fig. 18) p.48 E, with Polites, having been pursued by Pyrrhus, dying in the arms of his father Priam ( Ecce autem elapsus Pyrrhi... Bk II, l.526) 88 x 60mm (Fig. 20) p.50 J, with Helen hiding at the doors of the temple of Vesta ( Jamque adeo super unus... Bk II, l.567) 93 x 52mm (Fig. 27) p.154 T, with Venus watching over her two doves, which reveal the tree with the golden bough ( Talis erat spacies... BK VI, l.208) 150 x 65mm (fig. 29) Provenance, Exhibition History and Literature 5. PROVENANCE, EXHIBITION HISTORY AND LITERATURE PROVENANCE Sold by William Morris to Charles Fairfax Murray, c. 1890. By descent to Fairfax Murray's son Arthur; anonymous sale, Sotheby's, 18 July 1928, lot 2, /P 1,750 to Gregory. Mrs George W. Millard, from whom purchased by Mrs Estelle Doheny, 24 June 1932. The Estelle Doheny Collection, The Edward Laurence Doheny Memorial Library, St John's Seminary, Camarillo, California; sold The Estelle Doheny Collection, Part VI: Printed Books and Manuscripts concerning William Morris and his Circle, Christie's, New York, 19 May 1989, lot 2370. Lord Lloyd-Webber Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919)(fig. 9) not only owned the manuscript but played a crucial part in its decoration. Born in Bow, the son of a draper, he began his career as a shopboy with the famous firm of contractors Peto and Betts. In 1866, eager to become an artist, he approached John Ruskin for advice, and by the end of the year (aged seventeen) he was acting as Burne-Jones's first studio assistant. Before long he was also working for D.G. Rossetti and William Morris, with whom he struck up a close friendship. In the early 1870s he was Morris's principal painter of stained glass and much involved with the decoration of his illuminated manuscripts. In 1871 Murray paid his first visit to Italy and in 1873 he settled there, copying paintings for Ruskin and acquiring an exhaustive knowledge of the old masters. The rest of his life was spent between London and Italy, in both of which he established families. Although he continued to paint and, like Burne-Jones, exhibited regularly at the Grosvenor and New Galleries, his energies were increasingly devoted to collecting and dealing. By the 1880s he had established a formidable reputation as a connoisseur, and in 1893 Morris and Burne-Jones recommended him (unsuccessfully) for the directorship of the National Gallery. By the turn of the century he was in partnership with Agnew's, and his services as a marchand amateur were being sought internationally by such major collectors as Wilhelm von Bode, J.P. Morgan and H.C. Frick. Yet he remained intensely public-spirited, giving generously to the National Gallery, the Dulwich Art Gallery and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, as well as selling large numbers of Pre-Raphaelite drawings to the Birmingham Art Gallery for less than their market value. A short, thickset man, fiercely independent in character, Murray died at Chiswick after a series of strokes in January 1919. Carrie Estelle Betzold Doheny (1875-1958) married the prominent Californian oilman Edward Laurence Doheny in 1900; she was an operator working for the Sunset Telephone and Telegraph Company, and they met as a result of her placing his calls to wealthy investors. When Doheny died in 1935, he left her a large fortune, which she used to support Roman Catholic charities (Pope Pius XII made her a Countess in 1939, the first title of its kind to be granted in Southern California) and to create a magnificent library. With the help of the legendary bookseller A.S.W. Rosenbach, she bought extensively in such varied fields as illuminated manuscripts, incunabla, post-incunable Bibles and works of theology, material relating to William Morris, American literature and Presidential autographs. The Edward Laurence Doheny Memorial Library, which she established at St John's Seminary, Camarillo, California, was sold by Christie's in New York in six sales between October 1987 and May 1989, realising a total of $38 million, still a record for any library sold at auction. A further sale of the smaller library which she donated to the Mission Church of St Mary's of the Barrens, Perryville, Missouri, was sold by Christie's in New York on 14 December 2001. Lord Lloyd-Webber (born 1948) needs no introduction as a composer of popular musicals and an enthusiast for Pre-Raphaelite painting. LITERATURE Burne-Jones's autograph work record (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), under 1873 and 1875. Malcolm Bell, Sir Edward Burne-Jones: A Record and Review, 4th ed., London, 1898, p. 51. J.W. Mackail, The Life of William Morris, London, 1899, vol. 1, pp. 276-80, 319-20. G(eorgiana) B(urne)-J(ones), Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, London, 1904, vol. 2, p. 56. Fortun‚e De Lisle, Burne-Jones, London, 1904, pp.116, 189. May Morris (ed.), The Collected Works of William Morris, vol. 11, London, 1911, pp. XXI-XXVII. Anna Cox Brinton, A Pre-Raphaelite Aeneid of Virgil in the Collection of Mrs Edward Laurence Doheny of Los Angeles; being an Essay in Honor of the William Morris Centenary, Los Angeles, 1934. Philip Henderson, William Morris: His Life, Work and Friends, London, 1967, pp. 160-1. Janet Blackhouse, 'Pioneers of Modern Calligraphy and Illumination', British Museum Quarterly, vol. 33, 1968-9, pp. 72,75. Penelope Fitzgerald, Edward Burne-Jones: A Biography, London, 1975, pp. 154, 261. Norman Kelvin (ed.), The Collected Letters of William Morris, Princeton, vol. 1, 1984, pp. 254. The Earthly Paradise, exh. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, and other Canadian venues, 1993-4, cat. pp. 74-5, under no. A: 26. Fiona MacCarthy, William Morris: A Life for Our Time, London, 1994, pp. 267, 354. Christopher Wood, Burne-Jones, London, 1998, pp. 70, 94, illus. p. 55. The Wormsley Library: A Personal Selection, exh. The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, 1999, cat. p. 194. David Elliott, Charles Fairfax Murray: The Unknown Pre-Raphaelite, Lewes, 2000, p. 58. Manuscript Illumination in the Modern Age, exh. Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, 2001, cat. p. 171. EXHIBITION New York, The Pierpont Morgan Library, William Morris and the Art of the Book, 1976, no. 63. London, Victoria and Albert Museum, William Morris, 1996, no. N.14. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Birmingham, Museums and Art Gallery; and Paris, Mus‚e d'Orsay, Edward Burne-Jones: Victorian Artist-Dreamer, 1998-9, no. 66 (exhibited in New York only). NOTES Text and Script The supreme quality of Virgil's poetry was recognised in his lifetime and images inspired by his work soon became an established element of the Roman artistic tradition: the two earliest surviving illuminated manuscripts, both in the Vatican (Cod. Vat. Lat. 3867 and 3225), date from the first quarter of the 5th century and are extensively illustrated. His popularity lasted, in part because of the Christian interpretation given to some aspects of his work, and his poems were copied and read throughout the Middle Ages. Only rarely, however, were these copies illustrated and it was not until the Italian Renaissance that there was once again a significant production of illuminated manuscripts. In addition to the recognised poetic excellence and classical pedigree of the texts, the Aeneid, the tale of the travels of Aeneas and the Trojans until their arrival in Italy, had by then been accepted as the national epic. What could have had greater appeal to a humanist or his patrons? Characteristically a 15th-century Italian manuscript of Virgil was written in a humanistic script and decorated with 'white-vine initials', both script and decoration conscious revivals of what were thought to be classical styles. It was exactly these styles of writing and initial that were Morris's starting point when he resumed making illuminated manuscripts around 1870. It was a change of direction from his earlier efforts: the three surviving manuscripts that he wrote and painted in 1856-7 were based on gothic script and decoration and can be seen as part of the widespread enthusiasm for medieval manuscripts in the middle of the 19th century. In contrast the scripts that Morris developed for his calligraphic manuscripts from 1870 were all based on formal humanistic bookhands, whether upright or italic, and the roman minuscule of the Aeneid represents the culmination of his research and practice. At times writers have been encouraged to identify a model for this hand in manuscripts he could have seen in the British Museum, but straight copying of a script would have been counter to Morris's approach. He sought to analyse and follow the best scribal technique rather than slavishly imitate the appearance of someone else's work. As part of his return to first principles he acquired renaissance writing manuals. One of these, in addition to showing a range of humanistic styles, included instructions on the preparation of quills: his daughter May later wrote of his pens 'from a goose quill to a crow quill' and specified that he used a swan's feather for the Aeneid. Yet, whatever debt the script of the Aeneid owed to historic precedent his hand remained entirely idiosyncratic, vigorous and lively. As the scribe-calligrapher William Graily Hewitt recalled about his continuation of Morris's work: 'One day watching me at work, Charles Fairfax Murray and I burst out laughing; we had both had the same thought 'Yes your writing is better than Morris's, and your caps are better, and your gold is better - but you don't get there'. Morris's individuality of approach and divergence from any renaissance precedent is particularly evident in the page lay-out. With capitals of gold and blue sprinkling the text, and large illuminated initials in the left margin, the completed manuscript would have had much more the appearance of a medieval prose work than a humanistic copy of classical poetry. It was to allow this profusion of gold and colour that he not only abandoned the capitals that customarily began each line of verse but also adopted the paragraph divisions of his printed exemplar by marking them with large illuminated initials. He had entirely turned his back on the restraint of renaissance examples. This fresh and inventive response was typical of Morris's idealised revival of medieval arts. Idea and Execution Regarded as his calligraphic masterpiece, the Aeneid was the latest and most ambitious of the twenty-one illuminated manuscripts undertaken by Morris in the five years from 1870. It was to be a sumptuous work: the opening page of each of the twelve books was to have a full border around a half-page miniature and panel of text in golden capitals, all other pages would have capital letters of blue and burnished gold and paragraph divisions marked by large foliate or historiated initials. Describing the scope of their project Burne-Jones light-heartedly wrote 'it is to be a wonderful thing and put an end to printing' The original intention was for Morris to carry out both writing and illumination, but all the illustrative elements, miniatures and historiated initials, were to be designed by Burne-Jones. The two friends spent Sunday mornings from 1873 to 1875 engaged on the enterprise: Burne-Jones described how while he drew Morris would read aloud to him. For a variety of reasons - not least Morris's enthusiastic interest and experimentation with textile dyeing, which not only occupied his time but left his hands stained blue - the work was never finished. Although his first biographer - Burne-Jones's son-in-law J.W. Mackail -- recalled Morris turning over the sheets some 15 years later and talking of finishing it, the pair seem not to have worked on the book beyond 1875. Morris had written up to page 177, 33 lines from the end of Book VI; he had gilded text capitals on pages between 43 and 72 and had drawn or painted some of the large illuminated initials on these pages. Burne-Jones had drawn at least the twenty-nine designs for miniatures and initials that are now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. The intimacy of the collaboration is shown by Burne-Jones's annotations in the margins of the manuscript to show where his designs should be placed, and by the addition to some of Burne-Jones's initial designs of Morris's characteristic ink drawings for foliage staves. To some extent the friends must have progressed in tandem, for all of Burne-Jones's seventeen drawings for marginal miniatures and initials belong to the six Books written by Morris. Six of these designs correspond to the executed historiated initials and marginal miniature, and all but one of the others can be matched with the artist's instructional notes in the margins of the manuscript (pp.6, 38, 52, 70, 78, 80, 92, 94, 104, 110). Five further notes in Burne-Jones's hand suggest that there may have been other completed designs that didn't find their way to the Fitzwilliam (pp.4, 38, 40, 66, 76). Morris had started to transfer Burne-Jones's designs into the manuscript in 1875. He immediately realised that he would need assistance to bring the illumination to completion. On 27 May he wrote to Charles Fairfax Murray in Rome 'I have begun one of the Master's pictures for the Virgil: I make but a sorry hand at it till (at the worst) I am wholly discomforted. Meantime whether I succeed or not in the end 'twill be a long job: so I am asking you if you would do some of them, & what it would be worth your while to do them for: I think I should have to see you before you would get to work on them; but if you don't come over here this summer, as I suppose you won't by your letter, I shall like enough be coming to Italy next year & we can talk about it then'. He was apparently referring to the miniature on p.1. Fairfax Murray would already have been familiar with the project - not only was he buying the vellum for it in Italy, but in September 1874 Burne-Jones had agreed to a visit from him when 'I shall be engaged with Mr Morris designing for his Virgil'. According to later accounts Fairfax Murray almost entirely repainted the first miniature at Morris's request, and all the other painting that would transfer Burne-Jones's designs into the manuscript was left to him. The miniatures and initials in the book remain at various stages of achievement and give a clear account of the processes involved. The outer margins of four versos have traced sketches transferring the contours of Burne-Jones's designs for historiated initials (pp.52, 70, 78 and 94), they are positioned over Burne-Jones' faint identifying notes: for example, p.52 'Troy burning' and p.70 'Andromache'. Fairfax Murray then worked up these sketches with a grey wash (p.48) that was a prelude to his gradual, successive application of colour. Initially the compositions were laid in with broad impressionistic brushstrokes, with subsequent layers these became ever more refined and detailed until the finished illustration was a svelte and accomplished translation of Burne-Jones's pencil originals into plushly coloured and textured paintings. Mackail believed that Fairfax Murray had done most of his work on the Aeneid after his return to live in England in 1886. The manuscript remained unfinished when Morris sold it to him around 1890, but the historiated initials and the miniatures opening Books I, II, IV and V could have been completed during Morris's ownership of the volume. It was not until June 1904, six years after Morris's death, that Fairfax Murray commissioned an overjoyed Graily Hewitt to write the remainder of the text (pp.15 and 16 are also Hewitt's work). This pioneer of modern calligraphy was a proteg‚ of Sir Sydney Cockerell, who appears to have introduced him to Fairfax Murray. Graily Hewitt was already familiar with examples of Morris's calligraphy in Cockerell's collection; he was an admirer of Morris and, like him, drew inspiration from Italian renaissance manuscripts. In 1905 he was asked to name a price for providing the golden capital letters of text and headings for the Aeneid ; he wrote to Cockerell 'I quoted as low as I possibly could because I value the honour of the job so'. The recovery of medieval methods of gilding on vellum was Graily Hewitt's greatest practical achievement and he undertook this work in the Morris Virgil in 1909. Fairfax Murray recruited the decorative artist Louise Lessore, later Mrs Alfred Powell to draw and paint the full-page borders around the miniatures that open each Book. In 1907 these same collaborators completed the decoration of another unfinished Morris manuscript that Fairfax Murray owned, The Story of Frithiof the Bold (Wormsley Library). The team may have been working on both manuscripts at the same time. The miniatures for Books VI-XII of the Aeneid were certainly painted by Fairfax Murray after he was joined by Hewitt and Mrs Powell: whereas the early miniatures are rectangular, the scene of Aeneas and the Cumaean Sybil (Book VI) and those on the pages written by Graily Hewitt extend right up to the leaf-edges of Mrs Powell's borders. The scale ofu0his vast and ambitious undertaking once again militated against its completion. Graily Hewitt completed the text including the lines of golden capitals on the opening page of each Book: Morris had got no further than laying the bole ground for those on the first page. Morris had provided the gilt heading of p.47 and Graily Hewitt completed the running headings throughout the rest of the volume and the text capitals of gold and blue in Book I and blue capitals in Book II. Mrs Powell drew foliate borders for the openings of every Book but only four were completed: the magnificent golden vine derived from the Kelmscott Chaucer (p.1) that was gilded by Graily Hewitt, and the lavish, richly coloured painted surrounds of pp.181, 211 and 238, Mrs Powell's most accomplished achievement. All of the introductory miniatures, except for Aeneas and the Harpies for Book III, were started by Fairfax Murray but those of the final Books were left at a preliminary level of painting. Variations from Burne-Jones's designs suggest that between tracing for transfer and applying colour the original drawings may have ceased to be available to him. In the illustration for Book XI, for example, the contour for the line of huddled figures ranged behind Aeneas in Burne-Jones's composition was accurately traced to the manuscript (p.302), but when Fairfax Murray applied pigment to it the figures became an amorphous row of bushes. Similarly Mezentius's shield and coat of mail is left uncoloured, the grey wash over the traced outline having obscured Burne-Jones's original intent. Burne-Jones's Contribution Although the 1860s were a fallow period in Morris's calligraphic career, they did see one major collaboration with Burne-Jones in the field of book-production; in fact so substantial was it that it remained unrivalled until work began on the Kelmscott Chaucer in 1891. Morris originally intended to publish the Earthly Paradise, the great cycle of stories in verse that was to make his name as a poet, in a folio edition lavishly illustrated with woodcuts. Burne-Jones produced literally hundreds of sketches and finished drawings, mainly for 'The Story of Cupid and Psyche' (seventy subjects, 1865), 'The Hill of Venus' (twenty subjects, 1866) and 'Pygmalion and the Image' (twelve subjects, 1867). In the end, the project proved too ambitious and the book appeared without illustrations in 1868-70, although the designs provided Burne-Jones with compositional ideas for pictures until the very end of his life. The Earthly Paradise anticipates the Aeneid manuscript in two notable respects. First, it gave Burne-Jones immense experience in choosing which subjects to illustrate in a given text - those which are not only dramatic and represent salient incidents, but which lend themselves to pictorial expression and enable the artist to provide a sort of parallel narrative. He would have known Rossetti's famous claim that in illustrating a text an artist should 'allegorise on his own hook', that is to say he should not feel constrained to stick slavishly to what the author has written but should use his imagination to create a design that has independent life and meaning. Rossetti had sometimes taken this theory to extremes, notably in his designs for the famous Moxon Tennyson (1857). Burne-Jones was less of an egotist, but he did have a remarkable ablility to choose subjects which 'told' well as images and had an autonomous existence. Nowhere is this ability more vividly demonstrated that in his illustrations to the Aeneid. The other comparison to be drawn with The Earthly Paradise relates to technique. Although Burne-Jones made so many drawings for the poem's illustrations, he never actually cut one on wood, leaving this to Morris and others. When he attempted to etch a couple of designs, in other words to make the very plate from which the image would be printed, the results were disappointing and the experiment was abandoned. Time after time he distanced himself from an art form this way. He drew hundreds of stained-glass cartoons but never actually made a window. He designed many tapestries and needlework panels, but would never have dreamt of touching a loom or needle. He claimed that he had 'often' thought of taking up sculpture, deeming it superior to painting. But although he designed reliefs which were carried out by Sir J.E. Boehm and others, there is no concrete evidence that he made any himself. It is true that his involvement with Morris's manuscripts did not always follow this pattern. To A Book of Verse (fig. 8) he contributed a miniature illustrating the poem 'The Two Sides of the River', while no fewer than six miniatures adorn the second of Morris's three manuscripts of the Rubaiyat . Morris gave this manuscript to Burne-Jones, decorated only with some foliated ornament. Burne-Jones added the miniatures before passing it on to Frances Graham, the daughter of the India merchant and Liberal MP William Graham who was his staunchest and most sympathetic patron. None of this was accidental. 'The Two Sides of the River' is a love poem, and A Book of Verse was given to Georgiana Burne-Jones. One of the illustrations to the Rubaiyat was a minature version of a love subject, Love among the Ruins (private collection), that was currently on Burne-Jones's easel, and he gave the book to a young woman he idolised and delighted to shower with presents of his own making. There is an obvious parallel with the miniature version of Le Chant d'Amour that appears in the portrait of Maria Zambaco (fig. 6) - a picture exactly contemporary with A Book of Verse and only two years earlier than the Rubaiyat . It is almost as if the two manuscripts are physical incarnations of the book seen in the picture. But this is a side issue. The main point here is the connection between the subjects of the miniatures and the recipients of the manuscripts on the one hand, and the fact that Burne-Jones painted the miniatures in the manuscripts himself on the other. He was clearly motivated not so much by a desire to embellish a Morris manuscript per se as by a sense of wishing to pay homage to a loved one, whether she was his wife or an adored Egeria. When this strong personal element was lacking, Burne-Jones was happy to revert to the practice he had adopted with The Earthly Paradise, and prepare drawings for translation by another hand into the images seen on the page. For the Odes of Horace he designed the heads which appear in the elaborate border on the opening page of the first of the four Books, while for the contemporary Aeneid he was responisble for all the miniatures and historiated initials. Despite the very different medium, exactly the same proceedure was adhered to when he came to design illustrations for the Kelmscott Press in the 1890s. According to Sydney Cockerell, Burne-Jones's drawings for the Aeneid were 'perhaps the finest things he ever did'. This may be a little too sweeping, but they are certainly exquisite examples of his draughtsmanship, showing it at its most sophisticated and refined. Few preparatory sketches seem to have been made. One is recorded in a Canadian private collections (illustrated in the Earthly Paradise exhibition catalogue listed under 'Literature' above), but most of the finished drawings must have been done 'out of his head' ('the place', he once observed, 'where I think pictures ought to come from') during the Sunday morning s‚ances with Morris. In the 1860s, when the chief influences on his work had been Pheideian and Venetian, Burne-Jones had cultivated a soft, atmospheric drawing style, with soft pencil or red or white chalk as his preferred media. This approach changed dramatically in the early 1870s, following his last two visits to Italy in 1871 and 1873. Botticelli, Mantegna and Michelangelo were now his chosen masters, and he developed a more 'Florentine' manner, working with hard pencil and indulging to the full his love of linear rythm. It is this idiom that we see so brilliantly displayed in the Virgil compositions. Anyone seeking to show how Burne-Jones foreshadowed Art Noveau need look no further than the figure of Lavinia on fire in her father's palace, or the serpentine flames that rise from Dido's pyre. It is fascinating to note the differences between the drawings and Fairfax Murray's translations of them on the vellum page. Murray, of course, had long been involved with Morris's illuminated manuscripts, having contributed extensively to the Book of Verse (fig. 8) as well as to the British Library Rubaiyat (fig. 9), the Odes of Horace, and others. Nor was he a stranger to copying Burne-Jones's designs. He had done so in the case of the heads in the Horace, but this was only a minor example. As the artist's studio assistant in the late 1860s he had often been employed to make replicas of his master's works or to develop his pictorial ideas. When working as Morris's chief stained glass painter in the early 1870s he had again had to translate Burne-Jones's compositions. The Vyner memorial window in the Lady Chapel at Christ Church, Oxford (1872-3), is one for which we know he was responsible. It has already been noted that occasionally Murray seems to have misunderstood Burne-Jones's intentions, and that possibly there came a point when the drawings were no longer available to him. Burne-Jones retained them until they were included in the exhibition of his drawings held at the Fine Art Society, New Bond Street, in April 1896. There they were bought by the Wolverhampton brewer Laurence Hodson, a keen collector in this field, and from 1906 they belonged to the Birmingham solicitor J.R. Holliday, an equally fanatical enthusiast, who gave them to the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1927. However, since Hodson and Holliday belonged to a circle of conoisseurs which also included Murray and the ubiquitous Sydney Cockerell, the Aeneid drawings did not necessarily go beyond Murray's reach. Whatever caused Murray's occasional misreadings of Burne-Jones, they pale into insignificance beside the triumphant success of other translations. Not for nothing did Ruskin, thinking of the records of old master paintings that Murray made for him in Italy, call him a 'heaven-born copyist'. An outstanding example of this skill is the miniature showing the goddess Iris inciting the Trojan women to burn their enemies' ships. This very Botticellian conception is one of Burne-Jones's finest designs for the Virgil (as well, incidentally, as the one for which we have a preliminary sketch), but equally impressive is the way Murray realises it in watercolour. The effect is very different but no less authentic in terms of the alternative medium. The most obvious difference, of course, is that Murray is using colour while Burne-Jones is working in black and white. In his lifetime, Burne-Jones had a great reputation as a colourist, yet he often chose to eschew colour in favour of monochrome. The most striking example is his stained glass cartoons, which are nearly always drawn in pencil or charcoal, the colour of the glass being decided by Morris. In the case of the Aeneid miniatures the choice of colour was presumably Murray's, although it is possible that Morris offered suggestions. In any case, Murray's experience of painting stained-glass windows from Burne-Jones's designs under Morris's supervision must have given him some insight into how to proceed with the Aeneid. There is a parallel to be drawn between Burne-Jones 'Florentine' mode of drawing and Morris's use of a humanistic bookhand for his manuscripts of the early 1870s. Correspondences of this kind were not uncommon in the work of the two close friends. In the 1850s they were both thoroughgoing medievalists, while in the 1860s they developed a style characterised by a spring-like freshness of mood and imagery. This note, so typical of the early Aesthetic Movement, is struck in Burne-Jones's paintings, in the decorative schemes of the firm, and in Morris's Earthly Paradise. The same spirit pervades most of Morris's manuscripts of the early 1870s, both in terms of their elegant italic script and their decoration. Delicate sprays of foliage and powderings of flowers predominate, while even Murray's figure subjects in the Book of Verse and the British Library Rubaiyat have an enchanting spontaneity. In the Aeneid, on the other hand, the approach changes, whether in response to the much graver and more sonorous subject matter or Morris's conciousness of producing a masterpiece. The book's physical scale increases dramatically, and, as already noted (see 'Text and Script'), not only does the script gain in weight, changing to a roman minuscule in which the letters acquire a new breadth and substance, but the page is laid out in such a way that it resembles a medieval prose work rather than a humanistic copy of classical poetry. Burne-Jones's designs reinforce this effect, having none of the lightness of touch so characteristic of the miniatures and free-standing figures found in the other, slightly earlier manuscripts. Whereas in these the almost evanescent figure-work blends imperceptibly with the foliate decoration and even the text, the Virgil miniatures insist aggressively on their individual identity. Burne-Jones enhances their sense of autonomy by cramming his figures into the designs, pushing them to the very edges and often making them stoop to fit into the picture space at all. This majestic, doomed world of gods and heroes is also curiously claustrophobic. Perhaps it was simply that the friends were moving on, reaching out already to ideals that would only find full expression in the work of the Kelmscott Press twenty years later. The massive borders that Morris planned but never executed were yet another sign of this development. Somehow it was fitting that Graily Hewitt and Louise Powell should go to the Kelmscott Chaucer for inspiration when they renewed work on these sections (which in Mrs Powell's case anticipate the later work as a decorator of pottery for which she best known). Certainly both Morris and Burne-Jones made statements at the Kelmscott Press period which seem to relate retrospectively to the Aeneid. In the light of the manuscript's resemblance, its humanistic script notwithstanding, to a piece of medieval prose, it is interesting to read Lady Burne-Jones's account of a discussion between the two friends about whether 'an illustrated book of the Hill of Venus' should be in prose or verse. The book was to incorporate illustrations made long ago by Burne-Jones for the Earthly Paradise, and have ornamental borders specially designed by Morris. The dispute about prose or verse was decided by Morris saying that 'prose looks blacker on the page and fills up better - so it's to be prose'. But perhaps the most significant connection between the Aeneid and its Kelmscott successors was hinted at by Joseph Dunlap when he wrote of the manuscript that it 'conveys the impression of well-constructed masonry'. This is surely true of the way the component parts fit snugly together, and it was precisely in such architectural terms that the friends expressed their aims during the Kelmscott years. Morris, for instance, delivering a paper on 'The Ideal Book' to the Bibliographical Society on 19 June 1893, observed that ornament 'must form as much a part of the page as the type itself..., and in order to succeed...must submit to certain limitations and become architectural'. Only when this principle was firmly adhered to would a book 'become a work of art second to none, save a fine building duly decorated.' Burne-Jones made the same point more whimsically when he gave a copy of the Kelmscott Chaucer to his daughter. He did not mind confessing that it was beautiful, he said, because 'my share in it is (only) that of the carver of the images at Amiens', whereas Morris's was that of 'the Architect and Magister Lapicida'. SALESROOM NOTICE Please note that the lot number should read 10 in the catalogue, not 1 as stated.
Cat's Cradle pencil, pen and black and brown ink, unframed 10 5/8 x 8 3/8 in. (27 x 21.3 cm.) PROVENANCE The artist's studio sale; Christie's, London, 12 May 1883, lot 60, (14 gns to Scammell). Probably bought in by William Michael Rossetti, who referred to it as belonging to him in D.G. Rossetti as Designer and Writer, 1889 (see below). J.P. Heseltine (+); Sotheby's, London, 29 May 1935 (3rd day), lot 446, bought by William Rothenstein on behalf of a group of W.B. Yeats's friends, who gave it to him on his seventieth birthday in June 1935. By descent to Anne Yeats, the poet's daughter. LITERATURE William Michael Rossetti, D.G. Rossetti as Designer and Writer, London, 1889, p. 274, no. 88. H.C. Marillier, Dante Gabriel Rossetti: An Illustrated Memorial of his Art and Life, London, 1899, p. 237, no. 48. William Rothenstein, 'Yeats as a Painter saw Him', in Stephen Gwynn (ed.), Scattering Branches: Tributes to the Memory of W.B. Yeats, London, 1940, pp. 49-50. Allan Wade (ed.), The Letters of W.B. Yeats, London, 1954, p. 837. Virginia Surtees, The Paintings and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: A Catalogue Raisonn‚, Oxford, 1971, vol. I, p. 40, no. 77, 'present whereabouts unknown'. NOTES This drawing is an important and fascinating rediscovery. It appeared in Rossetti's studio sale, was listed by Marillier in his early monograph, and records of it up until the 1930s showed that it had a particularly interesting provenance; but it was missing when Virginia Surtees published her catalogue raisonn‚ in 1971, nor had it ever been reproduced in the Rossetti literature. In fact it is illustrated here for the first time. The subject could hardly be more characteristic. In the studio sale catalogue it was described as 'two lovers occupied with 'cat's cradle', seated close together on the grass; a boy approaches on tiptoe, seeming to warn them of imminent danger'. The lovers are indeed 'close together', the youth in particuar being unable to restrain his ardour. They recall Rossetti's comment on the illustration that Ford Madox Brown was to make for his poem 'Down Stream' in 1871, showing two rustic lovers embracing in a boat. 'You have certainly not minced the demonstrative matter', he told Brown, just as he himself has not 'minced it' here. Unlike Brown, Rossetti introduces a strong element of symbolism into his design, making the game of cat's cradle a metaphor for the lovers' emotional entanglement. This was typical of his approach. The calf on its way to market in Found (begun 1854) is another striking example, although a closer parallel would be the game of dice being played by the two men in Hesterna Rosa (1853) (see Surtees, nos. 64 and 57, both illustrated). But there is clearly some other dimension to the drawing that remains elusive. The child, so strangely standing on tiptoe, seems at first sight to be playing the role of Cupid, but the way in which he points to an unidentified object in his right hand, and the alarmed expressions of the lovers as they glance towards him, suggest a more complex and troubling narrative. He may indeed, as the studio sale catalogue puts it, be 'warning them of imminent danger', but there is surely more to it than that. In due course Rossetti scholars may elucidate this problem, although it should be noted that neither William Michael Rossetti, the artist's brother, nor A.C. Marillier could offer a solution. Marillier, moreover, was being advised and assisted by Charles Fairfax Murray, whose knowledge of Rossetti was second to none. Marillier merely states that the drawing was 'probably (a) design for a picture', which may well be true, although so far as we know no painting based on it was ever undertaken. Both Marillier and William Michael Rossetti dated the drawing to c.1855, and Virginia Surtees, with no first-hand knowledge of it in 1971, could only follow their lead. She now agrees, however, that this is a few years too early. The drawing is no longer in the medieval or 'Froissartian' style that Rossetti adopted in the mid-1850s, partly in response to studying John Ruskin's collection of illuminated manuscripts, partly under the influence of his two new-found acolytes, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones, who were ardent medievalists long before they met Rossetti in 1856. Rather we have here a delightful expression of the more 'Venetian' idiom that had emerged in this circle by the end of the decade. Charles Ricketts once wrote that he was 'convinced that Rossetti will seem a sort of Giorgione in the time to come', and Giorgione is certainly the artist we think of when we look at this scene of two lovers seated on the ground in an open-air setting. No less Giorgionesque is the pencil sketch at upper right of two girls reclining, one listening to the other playing a musical instrument. As early as 1849 Rossetti had written a sonnet on the famous Concert Champˆtre, long given to Giorgione but now accepted as by Titian, in the Louvre; but it was not until the late 1850s, after he had outgrown his Dantesque and 'Froissartian' phases, that Venetian sources had an appreciable impact on his style. The key image is Bocca Baciata of 1859 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), which Rossetti himself admitted had 'a rather Venetian aspect'. A female half-length painted in oils instead of his usual watercolour, it marked a radical new departure both in style and mood, evoking a spirit of sensuousness, worldliness and hedonism that was to colour his work well into the 1860s. The flamboyant Monna Vanna of 1866 (Tate Gallery), originally called Venus Veneta and intended to represent 'the Venetian ideal of female beauty', may be said to represent the climax of this trend. The Venetian style was complex in origin. It owed something to G.F. Watts, who had inherited a love of Titian as part of the legacy of the grand manner, and much to the atmosphere of opulent indolence cultivated at Little Holland House, of which so many Pre-Raphaelites were habitu‚s by the late 1850s. (The portrait Watts painted of Mrs Prinsep at this period was actually entitled In the Time of Giorgione.) Equally important were a dramatic shift in Ruskin's aesthetic and moral values, and a series of foreign visits. Rossetti, back in Paris in 1860 for his honeymoon, took the opportunity to study Veronese in the Louvre. Burne-Jones visited Venice in 1859 and 1862, his steps on each occasion being directed by Ruskin. No-one in the circle remained immune to the style. Although Rossetti was one of the leading exponents, it found rich expression in the work of Watts, Burne-Jones, Val Prinsep (Watts's pupil and Burne-Jones's travelling companion in 1859), Frederic Leighton, Holman Hunt, Simeon Solomon, and others. Julia Margaret Cameron's photographs provide some superb examples. Cat's Cradle must be more or less contemporary with Bocca Baciata. The female figure has a look of Fanny Cornforth, the handsome country girl of easy virtue who probably became Rossetti's mistress even before his marriage to Lizzie Siddal in 1860, and certainly moved into 16 Cheyne Walk as his housekeeper following Lizzie's death two years later. Changes of style and mood in Rossetti's work were nearly always connected with some emotional upheaval, and for him at least the advent of Fanny, with her coarse good looks and golden hair, was probably the catalyst for his adoption of an overtly Venetian mode. She was the model for Bocca Baciata and remained the muse of his Venetian phase, just as the virginal Lizzie had been that of his Dantesque period in the early fifties. The dress worn by the girl in Cat's Cradle is recognisable as one that Rossetti used elsewhere. It is worn by the dying woman in Bonifazio's Mistress (Surtees 121), a watercolour of 1860 of which the title alone speaks volumes in the 'Venetian' context, and by Lucretia Borgia in a group of watercolours dating from 1858-68 (Surtees 48, 48. R.I. and 124). A similar dress is also worn by Marie Spartali in Hypatia, a photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron of 1867. The characteristic design of the dress, laced with ribbon and dotted with bows at regular intervals, seems to have been taken from Bernardino Luini's painting of Ippolita Sforza at prayer in the church of S. Maurizio, Milan. Burne-Jones saw this when he visited Milan with Ruskin in 1862; indeed he copied other figures from this very cycle of frescoes, working by candle-light in the dark church. But Rossetti, who never visited Italy, must have known of the painting earlier from a print or photograph. The drawing is not only of great intrinsic interest but has an amazing provenance. At the Rossetti studio sale it was probably bought in by William Michael Rossetti, who recorded owning it in 1889. It is next heard of in the collection of J.P. Heseltine, appearing at his posthumous sale at Sotheby's in May 1935. Heseltine was one of the most respected connoisseurs of his day, and served as a trustee of the National Gallery for nearly forty years. Himself a talented draughtsman and etcher, he was a friend of many artists, notably Charles Keene. E.J. Poynter painted his wife, and his house in Queen's Gate, Kensington, was built by Norman Shaw. His enormous collection of old master and modern paintings, drawings, prints, coins and medals, took six days to disperse. A picture by Millais from Heseltine's collection, The Farmer's Daughter (c.1863), was sold in these Rooms on 14 March 1997 (lot 57). It was his only Millais painting, but it was typical of his taste in that it represented an attractive female model. The collection was rich in works of this kind - by Boucher, Fragonard, Liotard, Boilly, Ingres, Corot, Birket Foster and others; and perhaps in the present drawing Fanny worked her charms for Heseltine just as she had for Rossetti himself. At Heseltine's sale the drawing was bought by the artist William Rothenstein as a present for W.B. Yeats on his seventieth birthday. Rothenstein was acting on behalf of a group of the poet's admirers, one of whom, John Masefield, the Poet Laureate, took the drawing to Dublin and presented it to Yeats the following month. 'Hearing that his seventieth birthday was approaching', Rothenstein recalled in an essay entitled 'Yeats as a Painter saw Him', 'I consulted Masefield, and together we issued an appeal among Yeats's friends for a tribute to his eminence as a poet. It happened at this time that a sale of J.P. Heseltine's drawings was held at Sotheby's. Among these were some early ones by Rossetti, and I managed to secure the very drawing which would appeal to Yeats. Masefield, ever generous with his time, went to Dublin to attend the birthday dinner and presented the drawing on behalf of his English admirers'. Rothenstein was right in thinking that the drawing would give Yeats pleasure. Yeats had been fascinated by Rossetti since boyhood, when, as he wrote in his autogiography, 'I was in all things Pre-Raphaelite'. 'I thank you for the generous gifts, from you and others, brought by Masefield', he wrote to H.J.C. Grierson on 7 July 1935. 'The Rossetti delights me because of its beauty and becuase of its subject. Lucretia Borgia has always filled me with wonder. The woman of infamous reputation described by Bayard as his ideal woman'. It is interesting that Yeats immediately identified the female figure in the drawing as Lucretia Borgia. Having been acquainted for so long with Rossetti's work, he would have recognised that the figure's dress was the same that the artist had given to Lucretia in his watercolours illustrating the Borgia story. In fact two of these had belonged to members of his circle, which included many Rossetti enthusiasts. The first version of Borgia (Carlisle Art Gallery) had been bought by Charles Hazelwood Shannon at the Boyce sale in 1897, and having passed through the hands of W.L. Hacon, his partner in the Vale Press, and his patron Sir Edmund Davis, was now in the possession of another friend, the poet Gordon Bottomley. As for Lucretia Borgia (Tate Gallery), this had been given by Charles Ricketts, Shannon's lifelong companion, to the Tate Gallery in 1916 in memory of Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, the two women poets who wrote under the name of Michael Field. All this would probably have brought these images to Yeats's attention, but was he right in his assumption vis-…-vis the present drawing? Could it be a sketch for yet another Borgia subject? It is worth noting in passing that it was described in the Heseltine sale catalogue as a 'study for (a) historical composition', just a hint that someone else was thinking along these lines. And there was, after all, a cult of Lucretia Borgia in Pre-Raphaelite circles from the late 1850s. Closely associated with the Venetian style, not least because Lucretia had the golden hair that was suddenly so much in favour, it would perhaps be truer to call it a cult of the evil femme fatale, since Meinhold's Sidonia von Bork was a heroine who captured the set's imagination with equal force. A.C. Swinburne, always so alert to any hint of sadism, was the cult's chief devotee, but Rossetti's Borgia watercolours and Burne-Jones's two well-known illustrations of Meinhold's bloodcurdling romance (1860; Tate Gallery) were also important expressions of this curious craze. Moreover, there is another feature of the drawing that lends weight to Yeats's thesis. The male figure could be Cesare Borgia, Lucretia's brother, with whom she was accused of having incestuous relations. In fact she was said to have had such relations not only with Cesare but with her father, Pope Alexander VI, and Rossetti touches on this theme in Borgia, in which Lucretia is seen seated, playing a lute, while her father and brother lean lecherously over her shoulders. To find Yeats totally convincing, we would need to explain the presence of the tiptoe boy and identify the tantalisingly obscure object to which he is pointing. But it is just possible that a reading of the Borgia literature would shed light on these matters, and finally solve the riddle of the drawing's subject. We are grateful to Virginia Surtees for her help in preparing this entry.
[Genoa, c.1600] 145 x 169 mm. In a rectangular frame of liquid gold patterned on blue, the Magi offer their gifts to the Christ Child, seated on the Virgin's lap; their intricate costumes and offerings, as well as the star and its rays, are detailed in liquid gold; their retinue stretches back from the train bearers to the camel drivers who complete the circle of figures behind St Joseph. On the verso, six lines of text written in a humanistic hand with a prayer for the Virgin's intercession Deus qui salutis aeternae (paint loss from frame, slight losses within miniature). Mounted in a double-sided gilt wood frame. The miniature is attributable to Giovanni Battista Castello, called il Genovese (c.1548-1637) and so was produced in Genoa, probably around 1600. Castello was much in demand, chiefly as an illuminator: between 1583 and 1585 he was working in Spain for Philip II on choirbooks for the Escorial. Otherwise he seems mainly to have painted independent illuminated pictures, with the notable exception of a leaf from a Carthusian choirbook (Genoa, Galleria di Palazzo Bianco). This Adoration of the Magi, the text on the verso showing that it came from a prayerbook, is a rare example of his work in a manuscript. Castello signed and dated many of his independent illuminations, such as the Adoration of the Magi of 1599 (formerly Genoa, Amelotti Collection), which shows the same fusion of Raphaelesque and northern elements (see C. di Fabio, Giov. Battista Castello, il Genovese, and nos 34, 17 cited above). Castello owned many prints, including a volume of Drer, and this Adoration draws on the earlier traditions accessible through Drer and Schongauer. The composition is especially close to the Adoration of the Magi sold in these rooms, 19 April 1988 lot 42 (di Fabio, no 11, dated to c.1600), where the northern influences are more contemporary and mannerist. Both miniatures, however, show Castello working at his most colourful and with an exceptionally meticulous and refined technique. This miniature was owned by Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919): to the current owner by descent.
Charles Fairfax Murray British, 1849-1919 FOUR STUDIES OF A VIOLINIST'S HANDS Graphite on laid paper 8 1/4 x 5 1/2 inches (21 x 13.9 cm.) Estimate $ 600-800
