Sir Edward Coley Burne-jones

Description

This drawing is preparatory for the cushions painted on the bench of the painting King Cophetua and the Young Beggar Woman executed in 1884. This study recalls the drawing Six Cushions by Albrecht Dürer today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Burne-Jones became interested in the art of Dürer. During the 1850s, he executed several pen drawings which demonstrate the influence of Dürer’s engravings. It is difficult to know whether Burne-Jones knew Dürer’s drawing, but the sheet was in the Lubomirski Museum in 1868. It is very likely that photographs or reproductions of the drawing were in circulation from that time.