In 1867 Burne-Jones discovered a major patron in William Graham (1818-1885), a Scottish merchant and future Liberal Member of Parliament for Glasgow. Graham repre- sented the ideal collector, as keen to acquire small pictures as larger works that occupied a much greater amount of studio time. Two such cabinet pieces were the watercolours The Kings Wedding, a jewel-like miniature on vellum, and the larger Love Disguised as Reason (South African Cultural History Museum, Cape Town, on long loan to the South African National Gallery), both dating from 1870. 1 The Art Journal's comment on the latter, included in one of the artist's last exhibits at the Old Water- Colour Society in 1870, is applicable to both: "The grace of classic Art is infused with the ardour of mediaeval styles: the colour is brilliant as a missal, solemn as a church- window." 2 There seems to be no particular narrative to The Kings Wedding; compositionally, it shares the frieze-like qualities of the Saint George series, as well as the compact grouping of figures typical of many of the studies for Cupid and Psyche, Ruskin saw the picture while staying with Graham at his country house in Perthshire in September 1878, and described it (along with Rossetti's Ecce Ancilla Domini! and Millais's The Blind Girl) in The Three Colours o/Pre-Raphaelitism, original- ly published as two articles in the magazine Nineteenth Century for November and December of that year. Although loftily declaring it something that "has been perhaps done in the course of a summer afternoon," he praised Burne-Jones's com- mand of detail, with "figures of the average size of Angelico's on any altar predella; and the heads, of those on an average Corinthian or Syracusan coin ... The deep tone of the picture leaves several of the faces in obscurity, and none are drawn with much care, not even the bride s; but with enough to show that her features are at least as beautiful as those of an ordinary Greek goddess, while the depth of the distant background throws out her pale head in an almost lunar, yet unexaggerated, light; and the white and blue flowers of her narrow coronal, though mere- ly white and blue, shine, one knows not how, like gems." 3 1. Love Disguised as Reason is reproduced in Harrison and Waters 1973, fig. 131- 2. Art Journal, June 1870, p. 173. 3. Ruskin, Works, vol. 34 (1908), pp. 151-52.
Signed E BURNE JONES Fitzwilliam work list " 1870 ... The King's wedding - a watercolour on vellum." The dancing maidens recall Ambrogio Lorenzetti's The Well Governed City in the Palazzo Publico, Siena, and the musicians refer to that artist's Good Government at the same location. It is interesting to note that the Golden Stairs was originally titled The King's Wedding. Two of the maiden's have the features of Maria Zambaco and the dancing figures recall The Garden of the Hesperides on which he was working on at the same time. Fairfax Murray worked upon the painting, he was familiar with the features of Maria Zambaco, as he was making a version of Venus Epithalamia concurrently with the present watercolour. His hand is evident in the figure of Cupid and the musicians in the background. Burne-Jones wrote to Fairfax Murray " King's Wedding is ready for you to have - it needs a few hours more work..." Quoted in David B Elliot p 23
The original model for the bride was Frances Graham
Dear Little Murray Kings Wedding is / done enough for you to have - / it needs I think a few / hours more work but / that I can see better ? to do / presently when it is less fresh / to me - I sent it to / Mme Zambaco to have for a / day but tomorrow you can / have it - if you come here / for instance to lunch you / might go there afterwards / for it - or otherwise as you will - Everyour affect. / E.B.J