The present drawing is a study for the left-hand section of a larger watercolour of Love disguised as Reason, dated 1870 and now in the South African National Gallery, Cape Town. In that composition, which can also be seen in the photogravure after the watercolour, now in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (fig. 1), the two young women face Cupid, or Love, whose face is half hidden by the hood of the cloak of Reason, as he presents them with a clearly irrefutable argument. There is no literary background or narrative to the drawing, nor any sense of moralising. Behind the figures is an extensive town, giving the impression that the girls have stumbled across Love whilst walking. The present drawing has a far less expansive background, with a large building to the left, and trees closing the view to the right. The figures' poses are very close to the finished picture, and it seems likely that this study was an exercise in finalising the background against their poses. A full pencil study of the foreground of the composition, with the figures nude, is in the William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow. Burne-Jones often made such preliminary studies, with the figures nude, in order to better understand the physiology and poses of his subjects, before adding the clothes and drapery later. A fully clothed pencil study of Love is at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Property from descendants of Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (lots 101-126) Edward Burne-Jones and his wife Georgiana had a large, close family, who often provided inspiration for and were recipients of his work. Georgiana (née Macdonald), was one of four daughters of a Methodist minister. She first met Burne-Jones aged eleven, as he was a schoolfriend of her elder brother. She trained at the Government School of Design in South Kensington, chiefly to aid Burne-Jones in his career, and practised very little as an artist. Later in life she became increasingly independent and politically minded. The sisters were a remarkable family: Alice, the oldest, married John Lockwood Kipling in 1865, and was the mother of the author Rudyard Kipling. Agnes, the third daughter, married Sir Edward John Poynter, having met him through Burne-Jones and the Pre-Raphaelite circle. The fourth daughter, Louisa, married a Worcestershire ironmaster and was the mother of the prime minister Stanley Baldwin. Georgiana and Edward had two children, Philip (1861-1926) and Margaret (1866-1953). Philip became an artist himself, and an example of his work is included in the present group (lot 123). Margaret married a Scottish academic, John Mackail, and their children were the novelists Denis Mackail and Angela Thirkell. Burne-Jones often made drawings for his children, and later his grandchildren, and many of these, as well as larger and more finished works, have remained in the family. Christie's
Painted for the artist's daughter as a piece of decoration, it has none of the intensity of the original , probably painted some years later possibly from a photograph and pre-liminary studies.