In his later years Burne-Jones painted a series of exquisite watercolours of female figures and head studies on toned paper heightened with gold paint. These pictures were highly experimental and demonstrate Burne-Jones' enduring need to explore different techniques, even in his maturity. He told Thomas Matthew Rooke on 22 April 1897 "This gold work must be done very directly - it's an art of itself. I forget how I do it between one time and another, and it's always an experiment.'" (Mary Lago, Burne-Jones Talking: His Conversations, 1895-1898, Preserved by his Studio Assistant Thomas Rooke, 1982, p.143) Ancilla Matutina (the morning maid) is a beautiful example of this later style. Here the subject is a hand-maiden waiting patiently with her mistress' golden gown draped over her arm. The folds of her drapery were Burne-Jones' primary interest in this picture and they are depicted in a very sculptural way to convey the pattern and volume. The face of the girl resembles Burne-Jones' daughter Margaret and has a similar peaceful expression to one of the artist's masterpieces from this period Vespertina Quies of 1893 (Tate). Through a small window in the monumental architecture of the picture can be seen the golden light of dawn and, along with the title, the picture is connected to Burne-Jones' fascination at that time with allegorical depictions of morning. The present picture is very similar in size, technique and composition to Ruth Gleaning, painted in the same year (Christie's, 16 June 2010, lot 33). They may have been conceived as a pair or as part of a larger, unidentified series of full-length depictions of women. Sotheby's 2016
One of a series of works in which Burne-Jones has reduced the elements of a painting to their simplest form, experimenting with reduction in colour and organised geometric form as though subconsciously working towards abstraction.