In June 1860 William Morris and his wife, Jane, moved into Red House, designed by Philip Webb (1831-1915), and with the help of their friends began a scheme of decoration that included the kind of stained glass, hand-painted tiles, and fur- niture which would become the earliest products of the firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., founded the following year. Burne-Jones wrote in February 1862 that Morris was "slowly making Red House the beautifullest place on earth," 1 and made his own contribution with a series of wall paintings in the drawing room, on either side of a great wooden settle. Morris's biographer, J.W. Mackail, records that after their own marriage in June 1860, Edward and Georgiana Burne-Jones habitually spent their Sundays at Red House, and it has been suggested that Georgie may have been the model for the fig- ure on the left in this watercolor. The narrative for the paintings was taken from the fifteenth- century tale of Sir Degrevaunt, in the 1844 edition of Thorntons Romances, published by the Camden Society. The only subjects completed were of a wedding procession, ceremony and feast, appropriately including idealized depictions of the Morrises as Sir Degrevaunt and his bride. 2 Preparatory designs lor the murals include elaborate but unfinished studies in pen and ink for each of the major panels, as well as two sheets of predom- inantly female figures worked up in watercolor, of which this is one. 3 While the ink drawings and the wall paintings themselves betray a lingering debt to the claustrophobic style of Rossetti's medievalist watercolors, this exquisite group of figure studies shows, in addition to his innate sense of decorative design, an absorption of the mood and rich coloring of Venetian Renaissance painting, which Burne-Jones had studied on his first visit to Italy in the autumn of 1859. 4 The half-length fig- ure at the top right, with her distinctly Venetian pose and headdress, bears close comparison with that in the unfinished oil dating from about 1861, identified as Hope (cat. no. 19). 1. Mackail 1899, vol. 1, p. 159. 2. The Wedding Feast is reproduced in Victoria and Albert Museum 1996, p. 139, fig. 58. 3. Studies for The Wedding Procession are in the Royal Institute of British Architects (Arts Council 1975-76, no. 64) and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Fitzwilliam Museum 1980, no. 16); one study for The Wedding Feast was sold at Christies, March 13, 1973, lot 35. The water- color comparable with the present sheet, which shows the two central foreground figures of a serving maid and a Chaucer-like guest reading a manuscript, is in a Canadian private collection (Art Gallery of Ontario 1993-94, no. a:2). 4. An album of copies after the Old Masters, including some made in Venice in 1859, is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Arts Council 1975-76, no. 333).
Burne-Jones designed several subjects for the decoration of Morris' Red House in 1860 (see also no. 869); in this case the idyllic mood and dark, rich colouring betray his interest in early Venetian Art, especially Giorgione. The half-figure of a girl on the right is related to a watercolour of 1862, 'Hope', (reproduced no. 35 in 1975 A.C. catalogue). The narrative of the paintings is taken from the 15th Century tale of Sir Degrevaunt. See the 1844 edition of 'Thornton's Romances', publ. by the Camden Society.
Fitzwilliam work list- "1860 In the Autumn I painted 3 water pictures in tempura in Mr Morris' house at Upton in Kent, These have many figures in them" The early studies were from other member of their circle to be finally replaced by William and Jane Morris.
