SIR EDWARD COLEY BURNE-JONES, BT., A.R.A., R.W.S. (1833-1898)

Burne-Jones imagined this study of the ‘Hill-Fairies’ when he was working on The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon (fig. 1, Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico), the work that enthralled him during the last years of his life. He experimented with a triptych form and considered surrounding the scene with grouped male and females fairies displayed on the side panels. The present drawing is a study for the beautiful and elegant figures that could have accompanied his emblematic work and shows his involvement with the depiction of Arthurian subjects.

The three female bodies echo the image of classical naiads and dryads rather that the Victorian traditional representation of fairies. Delicate but with character, the fairies have been gracefully imagined, especially in the great care and detail of the expressions as well as in the fine depiction of the hands. In 1904 Georgiana Burne-Jones explained the importance that the ‘Hill-Fairies’ had had in her husband’s conception of The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon and in his attention to ‘the magical side of the story’.