Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt., A.R.A. 1833-1898

On the reverse of this sensitive drawing is the following inscription by an unknown hand; "I think this is a picture of Burne-Jones' daughter when young - Mrs Mackail who I knew some years ago - in the 1920s. She used to visit with her brother (Sir Philip Burne-Jones)."

Margaret was the beloved daughter of Edward Burne-Jones and his wife Georgiana. In 1888 she became engaged to the eminent classical scholar and future biographer of William Morris, J. W. Mackail. Although Burne-Jones attempted to put on a pretence that he was happy with the engagement, he was secretly devastated by the idea of losing his cherished daughter. He wrote to a friend 'I haven't felt very good about it - I have behaved better than I felt. She looks very happy, and before he wanted her, and before I dreamt of any such thing, I thought him a fine gentleman through and through, and yet, look what he has done to me! I have known him for seven years, and always he seemed a grave learned man who came to talk to me about books - and it wasn't about books he came, and now where am I in this story?' (Georgiana Burne-Jones, Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, 1904, I, pp.181-182) This outpouring seems rather selfish and egotistical but it is important to understand that Burne-Jones' paternal love for his daughter was as deep-felt and destructive as the other obsessions that ruled his life and art. He wanted to protect, cosset and enshrine his daughter and through his art he found a way of keeping her eternally young and pure. In The Rose Bower he painted her as a sleeping princess untouched by the knight, whilst she was the virgin bride being led to an uncertain future in The Wedding of Psyche. A mark of how Burne-Jones felt about his daughter is shown in another letter written soon after the engagement, to Lady Leighton (mother of the artist, Frederic Leighton) in which he states that she was someone "on whom I depend for everything and without whom I should crumble into senility in an hour' (ibid Georgiana Burne-Jones p. 182)