The composition was originally designed for the illustrated edition of William Morris's 'Earthly Paradise' which he and Burne Jones planned in 1865. Burne Jones began with 'The Story of Cupid and Psyche', and about fifty of his designs were cut on wood, mostly by Morris himself. The project was abandoned in 1868, partly because of the impossibility of finding a modern type-face that could be satisfactorily integrated with the illustrations (it was not until some twenty years later that Morris began the experiments with type design which led to the foundation of the Kelmscott Press); and since 'Cupid and Psyche' is only one of twelve sections of 'The Earthly Paradise', the scale of the project may have seem unduly ambitious. Forty-four of the woodblocks were printed and published in 1974 by Clover Hill Editions, Cambridge. The present drawing is the earliest of several versions. Another watercolour is in the Manchester Art Gallery and an oil-painting (untraced) was in the collection of F. R. Leyland; another, now in the Birmingham Art Gallery, is one of a series of twelve forming a frieze carried out between 1872 and 1881 in the dining-room of Lord Carlisle's house in Palace Green, Kensington.
In Burne-Jones’s version of the story [The Romaunt of the Rose] he deals with the figure of Pilgrim, guided by Love through trials encountered on the journey, to the quest’s achievement, symbolised by a rose garden in which the pilgrim is about to pluck the rose. Here the artist gives play to his delight in beautiful maidens and allows the pilgrim a relatively easy passage to the conclusion. This is in sharp contrast to a series of illustrations to “The Earthly Paradise” of 30 years before, which tells the story of Cupid and Psych; there Burne-Jones made Psyche complete a punishing journey before achieving entry to the realm of the gods (Fig. 82).
The pose of the figure of Cupid bears a relationship to Cupid in Rossetti's painting "Dante's Dream at the time of the Death of Beatrice" first version which was painted in 1856 and was in Ruskin's possession in 1864.
This watercolour being the first is the closest to the woodcut for Morris' narrative. The slight differences being the fountain no longer a spout but a lion mask, the water gushes across Psyche's groin, into the pool in the foreground and Psyche's hand falls across the edge of the pool. The erotic sentiment of the woodcut is less apparent and is supplanted by tenderer feels in the watercolour. Burne-Jones included pansies in the painting which according t Phillips (1825) symbolise thoughts and is obviously a coded message as they also mean "You occupy my thoughts". The whole of the Cupid and Psyche series appears to have had a relevance to the events in the artist's life and puts to question the accepted inception date of his relationship with Maria Zambaco as being in 1866. MacCarthy suggests that the meeting was engineered by Maria's mother Euphrosyne Cassavetti, however it is more likely that Maria had met Burne Jones at an earlier date on previous visits to London and that a friendship had ensued which was consolidated c1866. The points that identify this as the first painted version are the rose trellis filling eh whole of the background refers back to the garden at Red House, it is closest in detail to the woodcut, in later versions the artist has rejected lost profile of Psyche in favour for full profile making Psyche's pose more comfortable. The provenance of the other two versions indicate that this version is the one mentionned in the Fitzwilliam work list as being owned by Spartali. Four studies exist for the first version in the Fogg Museum of art. Bodleian Library MS. Douce 195 Manuscript illustration from fol. 146r Le roman de la rose Shelfmark: Bodleian Library MS. Douce 195 Holding Institution: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford Date Statement: 15th century, end Place of Origin: France Language: French, Middle (ca. 1400-1600) Catalogue Description: Catalogue of Western Medieval Manuscripts in Oxford Libraries Author: Guillaume de Lorris Jean de Meun Burne-Jones and Morris visited the Bodleian library to look at manuscripts while they were students, so that from an early age they were aware of this script.