Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt., A.R.A., R.W.S.

With Leicester Galleries, London;

Stanley Joseph Seeger (1930–2011), North Yorkshire;

His sale, London, Sotheby's, 14 June 2001, lot 20;

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 11 July 2013, lot 20;

Where purchased by the present owner.

The square shape of these enigmatic watercolours suggests that they may have been made as designs for a decorative project. They may have been made in preparation for painted panels for a piece of furniture or for ceramic tiles – both of which Burne-Jones produced in the first years of the1860s. They are in his early ultra-medieval style of flat heraldic perspective and bright colour which was inspired by Rossetti’s work of the late 1850s.

The subjects of the two watercolours have not been satisfactorily identified although it has been suggested that the scene depicting a sleeping knight - his head supported by his shield and his hands tightly gripping the sword - might be intended to depict Arthur with Excalibur. The other scene might depict Queen Iseult and Sir Tristram on their funerary bier, beneath pennants and surrounded by water.

The sun-flowers are reminiscent of those seen in the superb pen-and-ink drawing Childe Roland of 1861 (Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford) and also Scenes from the Life of St Frideswide of 1859 (Cheltenham Ladies College) a watercolour design for stained glass at Saint Andrew’s College in the Kentish village of Bradfield. Burne-Jones’ friend William Morris painted a proliferation of sun-flowers in his depiction of Sir Tristram on the ill-fated ceiling of the Oxford Debating Hall (it is now almost indiscernible), which may support the identification of at least one of the watercolours with the Arthurian legend of Sir Tristran and Iseult.