The drawing is a study for the head of one of the Gorgons crouching in terror in The Finding of Medusa in the Perseus series. It can be related to an entry of 1890 in Burne-Jones's autograph work-record in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge: 'after this I worked all summer at the Medusa part of the Perseus story'. The Perseus paintings were commissioned by Arthur Balfour in 1875 to decorate the music room in his London house, 4 Carlton Gardens, but remained unfinished at Burne-Jones's death twenty-three years later. The final versions, some finished and some not, are in the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, while the gouache cartoons are in the Southampton Art Gallery. The Finding of Medusa is one of the most dramatic designs not only in the Perseus series but in Burne-Jones's oeuvre as a whole. Medusa is the Gorgon whose head turns all who see it to stone, and Perseus needs it to defeat the sea monster to which Andromeda, the heroine of the story, is to be sacrificed. The painting shows him approaching with the intention of severing her head, avoiding looking at her directly by watching her in a mirror given to him by the goddess Minerva. Medusa awaits her doom apprehensively, while her two sisters, for one of whom the present drawing is a study, crouch in terror. The final painting was never started, but the cartoon at Southampton (Fig. 1) is a superb creation, powerfully conceived and handled with astonishing freedom. A later cartoon, somewhat unresolved and confused, represents the design at Stuttgart. There are studies for The Finding of Medusa dating from the early 1880s, but Burne-Jones then put the subject aside to concentrate on later scenes illustrating the rescue of Andromeda. Only after these canvases had been exhibited in 1887-8 did he return to the Medusa theme, noting in his work-record for 1890 how he 'worked all summer at the Medusa part of the Perseus story'. The present drawing, which is dated 1890, was clearly made at this period.
Bears a likeness to the Sister of Olive Maxse, Violet later Vicountess Milner
One of Burne-Jones' many friends was Cecilia Steele Maxse, the estranged wife of Admiral Frederick Augustus Maxse and the mother of Violet (later Viscountess Milner) and Olive, who, in their own rights, became close friends of Burne-Jones'. Violet, born in 1872, was the youngest Maxse child. She had a great interest in art, and studied in Paris from March 1893-January 1894. In June 1894, she married Lord Edward Cecil, a soldier and foreign service officer with whom she traveled widely. Their marriage was not a particularly happy one, and after Cecil's death in 1918, Violet married Sir Alfred Milner, who died in 1925. After her brother Leo's death in 1929, she took over editorship of the National Review, owned by their family since 1893. She had 2 children with Lord Cecil, George and Helen. She died in 1958.