So as it drew to ending of the day, Unto the city did they take their way. ...................................... So through the streets they went, and quickly spread News that the terror of the land was dead. And folk thronged round to see the twain go by, Or went before with flowers and minstrelsy, Rejoicing for the slaying of their shame. As befits the climactic scene, this is the most elaborate of the series, Burne-Jones giving a greater sense of spatial recession and movement by blending foreground and back- ground figures. A number of fine drawings for the female musicians, from among those at Birmingham, include studies not only of the nude figure and of the fall of drapery, but also of hands, arms, and feet. They reveal the artist's ability to accommodate remarkable variation within the pose and grouping of figures, a skill that was beginning to tax his ingenuity in the design of stained glass for the Morris firm. It is therefore not surprising to find, by this date, corre- spondences of pictures and cartoons, such as here between the piping female figures and the genus of trumpeting angels; such parallels are most apparent in the three -light window at Saint Edward s Church, Cheddleton, Staffordshire, designed in 1869. The young woman scattering flowers was similarly trans- lated into an independent painting under the title Flora (pri- vate collection), begun in 1868. The oil painting The Return of the Princess is now in the Bristol City Art Gallery.
The Return of the Princess, (no 6) from a group of six drawings depicting the legend of 'St George and the Dragon'; figure wearing armour, and woman walking to left, before them three figures, two of which play musical instruments and the third scatters flowers on the ground, beyond row of figures, many playing musical instruments, and in distance buildings.
Taking his subject matter from Christian legend, Burne-Jones shows St George and the pagan princess Sabra file past a large crowd in a triumphal procession right to left. In this final episode of the legend the dragon is slain, the princess liberated and converted, but the artist has depicted all figures with demure and dreamy expressions. Together with the narrow frieze-like composition, stylized forms and muted colours this deliberately heightens an early-symbolist intensity and unease of the scene. In the mid-1860s Burne-Jones painted seven canvases illustrating the story of St George for the dining-room of the artist Myles Birket Foster's house in Surrey. William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti also worked there. Nearly thirty years later, the series was sold and Burne-Jones largely re-painted it. The paintings went on an international exhibition tour and won a gold medal at the Seventh International Art Exhibition in Munich.
William Morris's The Earthly Paradise "The Doom of King Acrisius" quoted in the Mclean Gallery 1895 exhibition catalogue "So as it drew to ending of the day, unto the city did they take their way .............................................................. So through the streets they went and quickly spread News that the terror of the land was dead. And folk thronged round to see the twain go by Or went before with flower and minstrelsy, Rejoicing for the slaying of their shame."