... The blank space was trying and Mr Graham2, the first owner of the picture3, asked Burne-Jones if he could do anything to it and he continued the sky, either not caring to attempt to paint in the railings and grave stones or more probably not knowing what Rossetti intended to put there.
Thursday, January 19, 1899 ... but that of "FOUND" (20) must have ben made from one of the old Mansell negatives, as the background, showing what Burne-Jones sketched in, is faded out so it cannot be distinguished. In the original, as it hangs up fronting me as I write, that is as fresh and bright as the day it was sketched in.
16 February 1899 ... that Sir Edward Burne-Jones did the background of your "Found" (20). Hi handiwork was limited to smudging over with pale blue the space of sky to hide the marks of the stripping where the nails went - after the enlarging of the canvass, [sic] and he knew so little of Rossetti's intentions that he carried the sky right across the space left for the railings of the burial ground that should show above the wall. The bit of blue riverside with the distant wharves etc, must have been put in by Dunn, the rest of course is Rossetti's very own. 1. (231) [belonged to Miss Lilian Murray] Murray painted a copy of Found in which he apparently tried to show what it would have looked like if Rossetti had finished it.
Wednesday. March 15th., 1899 ... Now - first, why do yo "let out" at me about the background of "Found" (20)? Do you remember the conversation at The Grange the day we took lunch there, and your coming in when E.B-J. said that I "had both his work and Gabriel's in it,:" and you spoke up and said that you had been said that you had been telling me so all along, - and I replied I had not taken it in? My recollection is clear, - but of coarse I may be mistaken, - that he said that the background was bare when he took the pallette [sic] from D.G.R. and with the color he had been working with and sketched in the bridge, the river and the Surrey side, - and that Gabriel (as he called him) "never touched it afterwards". "The detail" he said R. had been working on must have been the feather in the bonnet, for the color of the sketch background is the same, and the tone and tint only modified a little. If there is any "legend" about it I do not mean to" industriously fight for it" as you say, nor do I think I am responsible for it. What say you further?
