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. The following eleven lots come from a portfolio of drawings which Burne-Jones made to entertain and amuse his granddaughter, Angela Mackail (later Thirkell). He began the group in 1892, when she was eighteen months old. Burne-Jones loved drawing for children, including, as his wife Georgiana wrote, ‘the child that was always in himself’. When his children Philip and Margaret were young, he made series of drawings for them, often with an educational angle, such as The Heroic Stories of Britain or The Pleasures of the Plain. Another group, Horrors of Mountainous Lands, were rather more ominous, including depictions of monsters and natural disasters. When Margaret’s own children were born, her father was forbidden to make such terrifying drawings. As a result, this portfolio group largely consists of studies of landscapes, animals and school children, but there are a few more difficult drawings, such as The Whirlpool, as Burne-Jones sent his granddaughter ‘the latest news from Nightmare Land’. Angela went on to become a very successful novelist, and Three Houses, published in 1931, is a childhood memoir which makes much of her idolisation of her maternal grandfather and his prodigious imagination.
The Exhibition of Drawings and Studies by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Bart. Burlington Fine Arts Club BFAC 1899 catalogue p. 44 case of Drawings for Children 1.26 lists the contents as follows:- 1. Baby seated on grass; ducks and a pond. 2. Portrait of her own Tiger. 3. Farmyard and pond. 4. Babies setting sale on a Boat." 5. "Boys' School." 6. "Girls' School." 7. "Cats' School." 8. "School for Dragon Babies." 9. "Seminary for more advanced Dragon Babies." "Hisstry School" and "Jogruffy School." 10. "Dragons Home." 11. "The Tower of Babel." (the beginning of a series of "The Wonders of the World" never completed) 12."The City of Brass." 13. "The Great Whirlpool" 14. "The North Sea." 15. "The King of all Beasts." 16. "Mount Abara." 17. "The Sphinx of the Desert." 18. "The Whirlwind." 19. "The Burning Mountain." 20. "The Well at the World's End." 21. "The Palace of King Solomon." 22. "The "Tree that Weeps." 23. "The Doors of Hell." 24. "The Wooden Horse of Troy." 25. "The Image that Sings at Sunrise." 26. "The Great Image of Rhodes." 27. "The Images that Played at Ball." 28. "Mirk Striders."