Edward Burne-Jones - The Mill

1882
Oil on canvas
35.83 × 77.56 in
Victoria and Albert Museum

The dancers were modelled by (left to right) Maria Zambaco, Marie Spartali Stillman and Aglaia Coronio.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/collections/paintings/galleries/further/essay/pre-raphaelites/index.html
Begun in 1870 and completed in 1882, Burne-Jones's painting The Mill depicts the three Graces dancing to the music of Apollo. The models were friends and relatives of Constantine Ionides, who commissioned the painting. His cousin Mary Zambaco, who posed for the woman on the far left, was Burne-Jones's lover.

The Mill displays what Ruskin termed 'the subtlest mythologies of Greek worship and Christian Romance', as well as acquaintance with Giorgione's poetic scenes and Botticelli's Primavera. 13. In 1891 Burne-Jones met the young Aubrey Beardsley, and encouraged him to pursue an artistic career

The painting belonged to Aglaia's brother Constantine and is now part of the Ionides collection at the V&A.

William Holman Hunt - Portrait of a Young Woman, perhaps Isabella Waugh

inscribed: [F]or Slubby/[with lo]ve from/Edith H[o]lman Hunt/[S]tudy of .../by W.H.[Holman Hunt]/.../[ma]de... [Cam]pden
oil on canvas
21 1/4 x 14"

This seems to be an unfinished portrait, rather than a study.
The torn inscribed label is in Edith Holman Hunt's hand indicating it was painted at 1 Tor Villa where the Hunts lived in the Spring and Summer of 1886 (before he left for the Holy Land), and it is supposed he ran out of time before his departure. At some later stage an extra strip of canvas was added to the lower edge.

Hunt had it framed to his own design which incorporated disks representing the phases of the moon. The pattern og the frieze is a drawn study Hunt made in 1876 inscribed 'Arab ornamental frieze on doorway of Mosque Jerusalem' now in the Birmingham Museum. Sopeculation has been that the picture was intended to represent Artemis.

But the original subject was a member of the Waugh family (Hunt was married first to Fanny Waugh, who died in 1866, and later to her suster Edith). The portrait resembles most another sister Isabella (b. 1843).

'Slubby' is Sir John Macdonell to whom Edith gave the picture.

John Everett Millais - study for 'A Huguenot'

pencil, arched top
2 3/4 x 2"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Huguenot

Milais based the subject on Tennyson's poem Circumstance - which describes two lovers whispering by a garden wall - but it was Holman Hunt who encouraged Millais to use a specific historical setting. Millais worked on the subject 1851-2. He set the painting in 16th C France showing a Huguenot refusing to wear a Roman Catholic badge to protect him from persecution. Millais may have been inspired by Meyerbeer's opera Les Huguenots which includes a similar theme.

The painting was finished in 1852 and was exhibited at the RA.

Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale - In the Spring Time

1901
Watercolour
15.5 x 10 3/8"



http://spiritoftheages.com/Eleanor%20Fortescue-Brickdale%20Collection.htm

Edward Burne-Jones - The Heart of the Rose

1889

one of a set of three pictures illustrating Chaucer's The Romaunt of the Rose.

signed with initials
38 x 51.5"
with a verse by William Morris:

'The ending of the tale ye see;
The Lover draws anigh the tree,
And takes the branch, and takes the rose,
That love and he so dearly chose.'

Exhibited New Gallery 1893

John Everett Millais - My First Sermon

signed with monogram
on board
13 x 9"

an autograph copy which was exhibited at the RA in 1863
the model was his oldest daughter Effie posing in the old pews in Kingston Church
This copy was painted for Agnews.

Walter Crane - Peacocks

['Bluebeard and Gloriana' - Peacocks on the terrace at Rode Hall, Cheshire] 1871
signed with monogram 1871 l.r.
watercolour, bodycolour and coloured chalks
11.5 x 17.5"

Rode Hall (Cheshire) was the home of Mr and Mrs Randle Wilbraham, friends of the artist in the late 1860's. It was exhibited at the Dudley Gallery.