On a visit to Burne-Jones's studio in 1862, in connection with illustrations for their Bible Gallery, the engraver brothers George and Edward Dalziel were "so fascinated with the man and his art that we at once asked him to paint a water colour drawing, size and subject to be left to him. About that time he had painted a picture, A Harmony in Blue/ for John Ruskin, and it was suggested that ours should be A Harmony in Red/ After some months the result was a most highly elab- orated water colour, 'The Annunciation.'" 1 Georgiana Burne- Jones recorded that it was painted in the summer of 1863 during a stay with the painter J. R. Spencer Stanhope at his house, Sandroyd, near Cobham, Surrey, where studies were also made for the background to The Merciful Knight (cat. no. 26). 2 Knowing that the Dalziels were going abroad, the artist wrote at the beginning of August to ask if he could "keep 'The Annunciation in my studio until you return; for, as I do not exhibit, that is my only way of letting people see what I have been doing." 3 In the following February, however, Burne-Jones was elected an Associate of the Society of Painters in Water- Colours (the "Old" Water-Colour Society), and the work became one of his first four exhibits in 1864, along with Fair Rosamund (1863; private collection), Cinderella (cat. no. 22), and The Merciful Knight. Criticism of his work in the art press focused on the early Italian spirit of his work epitomised by The Annunciation, causing the Art Journal's reviewer to pro- nounce that "had Duccio of Siena, or Cimabue of Florence, walked into Pall Mall and hung upon these walls their medi- aeval and archaic panels, surely no greater surprise could have been in reserve for the visitors to the gallery. "The same notice went on to deride the composition as "a bedstead set above a garden, at which the Virgin kneels in her night-dress. The angel Gabriel in his flight appears to have been caught in an apple-tree; however, he manages to look in at a kind of trap- door opening to tell his errand." 4 Such a hostile reception is reminiscent of the critics' reaction to early Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood paintings, and Burne-Jones was being no less challenging, this time to the conventions of watercolour paint- ing, in combining dramatic compositional effects with refer- ences to the art of the early Renaissance. Giotto is indeed invoked, through a general echo of the fres- coes in the Arena Chapel at Padua (and perhaps more partic- ularly The Angel Appearing to Anna), which Burne-Jones had seen in 1862, in the company of Ruskin. Equally important is the example of Carpaccio, whose work Burne-Jones had stud- ied extensively in Venice on the same trip. A number of ele- ments in The Annunciation, including the red bed hangings, book, slippers, and Oriental rug, also feature in the Dream of Saint Ursula (1495; Accademia, Venice), where the angel simi- larly appears in a ray of light. 1. Dalziel and Dalziel 1901, p. 164. Ruskin s watercolour was probably Viridis of Milan (1861; present whereabouts unknown). 2. Memorials, vol. 1, p. 261. 3. Dalziel and Dalziel 1901, p. 166. 4. Art Journal, June 1864, p. 170
Signed inscribed and numbered "1" on artist's label attached to reverse of frame. Ftizwilliam work list "1863 An Annunciation which Dalziel has" The wooden loggia in which the Virgin kneels is the same construction as that found in The Merciful Knight. The vanishing point in the perspective leads the eye from the Virgin into a corridor suggesting a world beyond, an early expression of the device in which the artist disrupts the picture space to invite the viewer to speculate on the context of the subject matter. In the formation of the painting, two important influences operated, Ruskin and the brothers the Dalziel. The Dalziels had executed a series of woodcuts of the Arena Chapel , Padua (Scrovegni Chapel), which had been commissioned from the Arundel Society with analytical descriptions from Ruskin. The artist either already had a copy or was presented with one by the Dalziels when they visited to make the commission. The artist's attention was focused because of the associations of the commissioner, Ruskin and memories of his recent visit to Italy.