Taking his subject matter from Christian legend, Burne-Jones shows St George and the pagan princess Sabra file past a large crowd in a triumphal procession right to left. In this final episode of the legend the dragon is slain, the princess liberated and converted, but the artist has depicted all figures with demure and dreamy expressions. Together with the narrow frieze-like composition, stylized forms and muted colours this deliberately heightens an early-symbolist intensity and unease of the scene. In the mid-1860s Burne-Jones painted seven canvases illustrating the story of St George for the dining-room of the artist Myles Birket Foster's house in Surrey. William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti also worked there. Nearly thirty years later (1895), the series was sold and Burne-Jones largely re-painted it which accounts for the later style of St. George and Princess Sabra and the facial types of the dancing girls. The paintings went on an international exhibition tour and won a gold medal at the Seventh International Art Exhibition in Munich.
William Morris's The Earthly Paradise "The Doom of King Acrisius" quoted in the Mclean Gallery 1895 exhibition catalogue "So as it drew to ending of the day, unto the city did they take their way .............................................................. So through the streets they went and quickly spread News that the terror of the land was dead. And folk thronged round to see the twain go by Or went before with flower and minstrelsy, Rejoicing for the slaying of their shame."
25 April 1895 Agnews bought them and had them oiled out4 and varnished and properly framed. Gooden then bought them and sold a half share in them to McLean who exhibited them at his place in Hay Market5. They are the cheapest lot of Burne-Jones's on the market, if you know of any friends who have a house big enough to hold them. 2 of them are as big as your [Samuel Bancroft] Briar Rose (197). 2 about 2/3rds this size and 3 others small. The difficulty is to sell them in the lump. Agnew was disposed to break them up if he hadn't sold them immediately and I expect that will be their ultimate fate.6 4. A process of rubbing the picture surface with oil to restore its original colour. 5. Thomas McLean's Gallery at 7 the Haymarket. 6. The set was dispersed.
13 May 1895 I do not know what the St. George pictures (!(") will go for but I believe 7,000. Everything depends on what E.B.J. will charge for retouching them as he wishes to do.
27 February [1897] I know exactly where E. B. J. got his Story of St. George from. He usually consulted Mrs. Jameson's "Sacred and Legendary Art"2 for the Lives of saints. I have referred to her book but the legend differs in details. he has probably supplemented it from other sources, but for all the details he would not be bound by any authority. 2. Anna Brownell Jameson. Sacred and legendary Art. London, Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans. 1848