A preparatory composition c 1872 later coloured and presented to the Director of The Grosvenor Gallery Charles E Halle. Account book 1864 – Jan 1: 10 designs of Sleeping Beauty (First appearance) Fitzwilliam work list: 1871 – A small picture on velum in watercolours of the Sleeping Beauty in a saffron dress 1872 Four pictures of Sleeping Beauty in oil painted for Graham began in 1871 1873 – Finished the small Briar Rose pictures for Graham 1874 – Worked upon the Briar Rose pictures 1875 - Worked at the Loom in the large Briar Rose story… and at the girls in Briar Rose… 1884 – took up again in June the subject of the Briar Rose.. in the Autumn until the end of the year painted on the first picture of the Sleeping Beauty of Briar Rose 1885 – I took up again and finished the first of the Briar Rose… this Autumn began another of the Briar Rose pictures- the fourth with the Princess asleep 1886 – In the Summer I painted on the Sleeping princess 1887 – re drew all the figures of the sleeping girls and the third picture of the sleeping palace These are the references to the Briar Rose series in the Fitzwilliam work list and a single entry from the Morris & Co Account book ( Fitzwilliam). Though incomplete they give a guide to the evolution of the paintings.
This fine drawing corresponds to the third painting in the Briar Rose series which occupied Burne-Jones for so much of his career. The story of Sleeping Beauty, told in the seventeenth century by Charles Perrault in his Contes du Temps Passé, later re-cast by the brothers Grimm and by Tennyson in his poem 'The Day-Dream', first attracted Burne-Jones's attention in the early 1860s, when it was one of several fairy stories to inspire the sets of tiles which he designed for Birket Foster's house, The Hill, at Witley. By 1869 he had conceived the idea of treating the story in terms of a series of paintings, and in 1871 he began the so-called 'small' set of three canvases for his patron William Graham, completing them in 1873 (Museo de Arte, Ponce, Puerto Rico). By the following year he had started a much larger set, adding a fourth subject of girls working at a loom which he placed third in the series and called The Garden Court. The paintings were finally completed in 1890, when they were exhibited to great acclaim at Agnew's and bought by Alexander Henderson, who installed them in the saloon at Buscot Park, near Lechlade, where they remain. During their long gestation three of the canvases had been abandoned and started afresh. These were completed in 1892-5 and are now dispersed; The Council Chamber is at Wilmington, The Garden Court at Plymouth (sic), and The Rose Bower in the Municipal Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. The precise purpose of the present drawing is difficult to determine. On grounds of style it clearly dates from the early 1870s, and it is generally assumed that it was made when Burne-Jones decided to add a fourth subject to the series about 1874. It is certainly curious that such an elaborate drawing should exist for this subject, while few drawings, if any, appear to survive for the three paintings executed for Graham. If we could see our way to dating the drawing to as late as 1875, it would even be possible to relate it to an entry in Burne-Jones's work-record (Fitzwilliam Museum) for that year: 'worked at the loom in the large Briar Rose story'. There is, however, evidence to suggest that Burne-Jones thought in terms of four paintings from the outset. Another entry in the work-list, under 1872, reads as follows: '4 pictures of Sleeping Beauty - painted in oil for Graham, begun in 1871'. In view of the existence of only three paintings in the 'small' set, this has generally been overlooked or dismissed as a slip of the pen; but there is no real reason to doubt it, even though it would imply that the fourth painting was abandoned or lost at some later date. If a fourth painting was envisaged for the 'small' set, then the present drawing could have been connected with it. It would mean that it dated from 1873 (the year the 'small' set was finished) at the latest, but this is not inconveivable, either in terms of the drawing style or the composition, which looks back to the Moore-like groups with which Burne-Jones had so often experimented in the mid to late 1860s. Three further points need clarifying. When the drawing was sold in 1986, it was stated in the catalogue that it was 'a reversed image of the final oil', i.e. of the painting at Buscot. This is not the case, drawing and painting being in the same direction. The confusion probably arose because the Buscot painting is reproduced in reverse in Martin Harrison and Bill Waters, Burne-Jones, 1973, pl. 436. Secondly, it was stated that the drawing had belonged to Sir Charles Hallé, that is to say the conductor who founded the Hallé Orchestra. In fact it belonged to his son, Charles Edward Hallé (1846-1919), the artist and director of the Grosvenor and New Galleries who was a friend of Burne-Jones for many years. His masterpiece, Paolo and Francesca, was sold in these Rooms on 13 March 1992, lot 89. Thirdly, it was suggested that the drawing was 'probably' exhibited at the New Gallery in the summer of 1890 as one of nos. 334-9, described in the catalogue as 'coloured designs for sleeping girls in the third picture of the (Briar Rose) series'. This again was not the case. The drawings exhibited in 1890 were the six large gouache studies for individual figures in the Buscot painting, now in the Birmingham City Art Gallery. Our drawing does not seem to have been exhibited until Hallé lent it to the show of Burne-Jones's drawings held at the Burlington Fine Arts Club the year after the artist's death.