Beschreibung:

EDWARD COLEY BURNE-JONES (BRITISH 1833 - 1898) STUDY FOR THE BALEFUL HEAD Charcoal and brown chalk heightened with white Signed with monogram (lower left) 50.5 x 33.5cm (19¾ x 13 in.) Provenance: The Shepherd Gallery, Inc., New York Stuart Pivar Sale, Sotheby's, New York, 24 October 1996, lot 391 Miss Isabel Goldsmith Exhibited: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1995, No. 34 Literature: Lost Paradise: Symbolist Europe, exh. cat., Montreal, 1995, no. 34, pl. 280, pp. 204, 508, illustrated in colour p. 204 The present lot is a study for Burne-Jones', The Baleful Head, 1886-7, which is the final work from the artist's celebrated Perseus series. The oil paintings are now in the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, Germany (fig 1) and ten preparatory cartoons in gouache are in Southampton Art Gallery. The series was commissioned in 1875 by the British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour (1848-1930) for the music room of 4 Carlton Gardens, his London home. Lord Balfour and Burne-Jones were both interested in William Morris's epic poem, The Earthly Paradise. Burne-Jones planned to create ten paintings depicting the adventures of Perseus, from the slaying of Medusa through to the rescue of Andromeda from Poseidon's sea monster. Unfortunately, the series was never finished due to Burne-Jones's ill health. The series is based on several Greek myths and is a heroic tale of knight-errantry and the triumph of good over evil. Perseus, son of the God Zeus is sent to rescue the beautiful Andromeda and kill the Gorgon Medusa. The legend has been popular in art since antiquity. Rubens, Titian and Delacroix all painted aspects of it. Burne-Jones depicts the main episodes to form a coherent and engaging narrative. The scene depicted in The Baleful Head takes place after Perseus has married Andromeda. Perseus then shows Andromeda Medusa's head, through the reflection in the octagonal well, so as not to turn her into stone. Burne-Jones's sketches were an important aspect of his artistic process, and it is interesting to note the similarity of this study with the finished oil version. Lord Balfour visited Burne-Jones to approve the sketches ahead of them being painted in oil. `Burne-Jones transports us into a primordial paradise, where man faces for the first time the natural cycle of life, in which life flows out of death. The barren landscapes of the Perseus series do not distract from the significant action, the eternal struggle of good and evil. Only the final panel, The Baleful Head presents a true Garden of Eden, in which our hero is triumphant and duly rewarded' (A. Andersen, The Perseus Series, Southampton Art Gallery, p.6).