This fine example of Burne-Jones's later draughtsmanship is also a fascinating historical document since in 1894, four years after it was executed, it was given by the artist to the Belgian symbolist Fernand Khnopff. In return Khnopff gave Burne-Jones, who was twenty-five years his senior, a comparable red and white chalk drawing, Study for a Sphinx, dated 1886. (Private collection; repr. Busine, op. cit., p. 58.) Khnopff was a frequent visitor to London in the 1890s , contributing articles to the Studio and the Magazine of Art, and he extablished a friendship with Burne-Jones, whose art he had admired since 1878, when it was first exhibited in Paris. The drawings were exchanged as a symbol of their regard for one another, the two artists also seem to have exercised a certain mutual influence, although Khnopff, not surprisingly in view of their respective ages, was probably the main beneficiary. Khnopff hung the drawing against blue silk in the 'blue room' which was a feature of the house which he built himself in the Avenue des Courses in Brussels 1900-2, and it is mentioned in contemporary articles on this remarkable dwelling. He also had a reproduction of Burne-Jones's Wheel of Fortune (Musée D'Orsay, Paris) which he hung in the 'white room', both images testifying to his reverence for his now dead friend. For further details of the relationship, see Laurent Busine's article quoted above; and for an assessment of the mutual stylistic influence between Knopff and Burne-Jones, see Francine-Claire Legrand, 'Fernand Khnopff - Perfect Symbolist', Apollo, April 1967, pp. 278-87
The Thibaut de Maisières Family