Venetia Benson (1864-1946) was the wife of the architect and designer W A S Benson and daughter of the watercolourist Alfred William Hunt, a close friend of EB-J. Venetia was the sister of Violet Hunt (1862-1942) who wrote an early essay on Elizabeth Siddal. A formal portrait of the sitter and not made as a study for a painting. Venetia was the model for The Spirit of the Downs in 1883.
Venetia Benson was twenty-six years old when this ravishing portrait drawing was made of her by Edward Burne-Jones. While clearly expressing Burne-Jones's admiration for Venetia's beauty and youthfulness, it was also imbued with feelings of affection for Venetia's parents - Alfred and Margaret Hunt - and for her husband - W. A. S. Benson. Alfred William Hunt (1830-960, the distinguished landscape watercolourist and leading member of the Old Water-Colour Society, had been a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, at the time when Burne-Jones was himself up at Exeter College. At the time of his death Burne-Jones reminisced about him and the landscape paintings that he had shown at Wyatt's print shop in the High Street 9See Burne-Jones Talking, Mary Lago (ed.), London, 1981, pp. 99-100) William Arthur Smith Benson (1854-1924) was a designer, notably of metalworks (hence his being familiarity known as "Brass" Benson), and an architect whom Burne-Jones called upon occasionally to invent objects that he needed to include in his paintings. For example, Benson designed the fantastic armour and crown that appear in Burne-Jones's King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid (Tate Gallery). Venetia had been brought up among artists and writers: John Ruskin was her god-father, and it was on his request that she was named Venetia a (or as he preferred "Venice"). At the age of nine, in 1873, she was sent alone to stay with Ruskin at Brantwood on Coniston Water, an experience which remained in her memory for a lifetime. It is not known whether the present drawing was commissioned from Burne-Jones by Venetia or by her father or husband, or whether it was undertaken by the artist as a gesture of friendliness towards her and her family. On balance the latter seems the more likely theory. Venentia Benson lived until 1946, when she was eighty-tow years old. She was a much loved figure in Pembrokeshire to which county she and W.A.S.Benson went to live, and where she campaigned relentlessly for the preservation of the coastline. She and her sister Sylvia made a generous bequest of watercolours and drawings by their father to the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Of Alfred Hunt's three daughters (the eldest was the writer Violet Hunt), only Sylvia had children. The present drawing passed to the sitter's niece at the time of Venetia's death and has remained in the possession of the family to the present. Sotheby's: 4 June 1997.
MRS. WILLIAM BENSON In chalk on red ground, under life size, profile to L. Signed "E.B.J. V.B. 1890." 13 1/2 by 10 1/2 Lent by W.A.S. Benson, Esq. [Monkhouse has "profile to L." when it is actually profile to R.]