The maiden pleasance of the land Knoweth no stir of voice and hand, No cup the sleeping waters fill, The restless shuttle lieth still. It can only have been Burne-Jones's desire to complete the remaining Briar Rose subjects for Agnew s on entirely new canvases that caused him to abandon the Bristol version of The Garden Court in 1887, since there are only slight variations in the figures. These are telling, however, as in the transformation of the pose of the second girl from the left from that of a nat- uralistic sleep to one of a deep, trancelike state. The subtle but important changes were worked out in an exceptional series of six studies in solid bodycolor, in which the artist all but eliminated detail (leaving, for instance, the hand on an extraordinarily modern-looking wedge) in order to invoke a timeless and soporific mood. Remarkably, he signed and inscribed them all, and sent them for exhibition at the New Gallery in 1890, to complement the showing of the finished oils at Agnew s. Although Burne-Jones may have castigated Whisler, during evidence he gave in support of Ruskin in the libel trial of 1878 (see p. 195), for his want of "finish," and the Impressionists for their general "muzz," he must have been aware of the force and sheer beauty of such perfect examples of painterliness as these.
Burne-Jones's interest in the Sleeping Beauty story of the Briar Rose began as early as a tile panel in 1864. A small series of oil paintings for William Graham followed, and then a larger set of four oils, finally completed in 1890 before being bought by Alexander Henderson, later 1st Lord Faringdon, and installed in Buscot Park, Oxfordshire. Changes during this process to the Garden Court scene were worked out in this series of six large bodycolours, now in the Birmingham collection. At a Christie's sale, on the 3 October 1995, lot 107 was a study in black chalk for 'The Garden Court' from the 'Briar Rose' Series. It is a highly detailed drawing of a sleeping attendant, in the same pose and similar details to this study, it may have been the original chalk study for this gouache. Bequeathed by Miss Katherine Lewis, 1961.