Edward Burne-Jones - Study of Hands for the Portrait of Amy Gaskell

Black and white chalk on sanguine paper, 11¼ × 8½ ins

This drawing is a study for a finished oil of Amy Gaskell in the Lloyd Webber
Collection (exhibited at the Royal Academy, 2003, Pre-Raphaelite and Other Masters,
no. 50). The portrait of Amy Gaskell is one of the artist’s most haunting, reflecting the enigma of a youth that is no longer a girl, but not yet a woman. Amy was the daughter of one of his dearest friends, May Gaskell whose relationship with Burne-Jones has been recently explored in Josceline Dimbleby’s A Profound Secret (London, 2004).