EDWARD COLEY BURNE-JONES (BRITISH 1833-1898) Lot n° 17

(I & II) INFANT'S HEAD FOR PUTTI IN 'TERRA OMNIPARENS' - RECTO; A STUDY OF A PUTTI'S HEAD AND HAND - VERSO I; A STUDY FOR 'THE GOLDEN STAIRS' - VERSO II pencil on paper both 25 x 14cm; 9 3/4 x 5 1/2in each 65 x 26cm; 25 1/2 x 10 1/4in (framed as one) Property sold on behalf of a Charitable Trust Provenance Sir George and Lady Elizabeth Lewis (a gift from The artist in 1881) Thence by descent to the present owner, grandson of the above Executed in 1879. The present two pages are preparatory sketches for Terra Omniparens, the painted inside-lid of a piano that depicts Mother Earth amid a grape-vine among which a throng of infants and baby-fauns are clambering. The decoration was for his friend and patron William Graham, a Scottish merchant and politician who presented the piano to his daughter Frances on her twenty-first birthday. Unlike the seraphic bliss the child exudes in the present work, Burne-Jones characterized the putti in his painting as miniature satyrs with pointed forelocks and tiny horns. On the verso of (II) is a study for the figure holding a pipe at the top of the stairs in The Golden Stairs (Collection Tate Britain) begun in the 1870s and completed in 1880, the model was Margaret Burne-Jones (1866-1953), the artist's daughter. See note to lot 15