Erroneously described as "Circle of Augustus John" when previously offered for sale, this is, in fact, the lost left hand portion of a study for Burne-Jones’s 'The Sirens'. The more famous right hand portion of the study had once been owned by Virginia Surtees, and at various times had been offered for sale by the Maas Gallery, Hartnoll & Eyre, Sotheby’s, Christie’s and more recently Bauman Rare Books in the USA. By contrast the left hand portion, as far as I am aware, is hitherto unrecorded, and was separated from its other half at least fifty years ago. When the right hand portion of the study was offered for sale at Christie’s, London on 6 June 2002, lot 85, the sheet’s dimensions were given as 47 x 34 cm, exactly matching the vertical dimension of the present sheet.
The oil painting is now held in the Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota Florida. USA The drawing is c.1895
This elegant and very freely handled drawing shows Burne-Jones's later style at its most abstract and mannered. Newly rediscovered, this drawing is the left-hand section of the composition of The Sirens; a drawing of the right-hand section was offered in these Rooms on 6 June 2002, lot 85. That sheet was the same height and used the same paper, and it seems likely that it was originally one large sheet, at some point divided into two. Burne-Jones first considered The Sirens as the subject for a painting in 1870, referring to it again in his work record in 1872 as a subject 'which above all others I desire to paint', although there is no mention of a first design until 1880, and the painting was not fully under way until about 1891. Now in the Ringling Museum, Sarasota, California, it remained unfinished at his death in 1898.