Like so many paintings at this date, there is an autobiographical element to his choice of subject in Study of Nimue for 'The Beguiling of Merlin. The model for Nimuë, who we see in the present picture, was Maria Zambaco (1843-1914), a married Grecian beauty with whom Burne-Jones, ten years her senior, conducted a passionate affair. Maria was wayward, headstrong and artistically talented (she later made her name as a sculptor), but also ravishingly beautiful, with dark eyes, red hair and pale skin and represented in human form the classical Greek ideal that Burne-Jones was looking for in his work in the late 1860s and early 1870s.

Maria's maiden name was Cassavetti and she was a cousin of the Ionides, the important Anglo-Greek family who played a seminal role in the annals of Victorian art. In 1861 she married Demetrius Zambaco, a doctor serving the Greek community in Paris, but four years later, left him and returned with her children to London and in 1867 at the age of twenty-three she was introduced to Burne-Jones. Their relationship was often reflected in a symbolic way in Burne-Jones's work, his paintings from this date illustrating the power of love and its enchantment, for example Love among the Ruins (private collection) and Phyllis and Demophoön (Birmingham Museums Trust).  

The emotional turmoil of their relationship put a severe strain on Burne-Jones's health, and the affair reached a climax in January 1869, when Maria tried to commit suicide in Regent's Canal, London. Restrained by her lover, she failed, and the relationship continued at a less feverish pace until well into the 1870s, perhaps even later. 

The painting was conceived possibly as early as 1870 and Burne-Jones started work in 1872 just after his highly influential third visit to Italy in 1871 which had an enormous impact on his work in terms of style, inventiveness and productivity. He worked on it extensively in 1875, finishing it in 1877. In 1878 it was sent to the Exposition Universelle in Paris, the first time Burne-Jones' work had been seen abroad. The critic F.G. Stephens, reviewing the finished painting at the Grosvenor Gallery's exhibition wrote 'Nimue's face in its snaky intensity of malice is marvellous...' 

The present work may be a sketch for the first version of the painting which Burne-Jones was forced to abandon. Lady Burne Jones in her Memorials quotes a letter Burne Jones wrote to his patron F.R. Leyland regarding the trouble he had had with the first version due to the paint not adhering to the canvas. The letter suggests that the canvas was abandoned at a later stage in its development than the present work. Pencil studies for The Beguiling of Merlin are in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, the Bancroft Collection at Wilmington, Delaware, and elsewhere.  

The second work in this sale by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones is Spes and Daphne, one of Burne Jones's most highly finished drawings and one of the group of large scale, semi-independent works that relate to the needlework frieze designed to hang round the upper walls of the dining-room at Rounton Grange, Northallerton, a house commissioned from the architect Philip Webb (1831-1915) by the Novocastrian ironmaster and metallurgist Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell (1816-1904) in 1872. 

The commission in 1874 to decorate the interior of the house was one of the most important to date for Morris and Company and included wallpapers, ceilings, furniture and carpets. Burne-Jones and William Morris took the opportunity afforded by the commission to illustrate the medieval tale Romaunt of the Rose on a needlework frieze which was to be was worked by Sir Lowthian's wife, Margaret, and his daughters who were experienced needlewomen. The frieze was completed in 1882 and survives in the William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow. 

The group of full-size pencil drawings, which includes the present drawing, Spes and Daphne, were finished to an exceptional level and reveal Burne-Jones's love of the medium and the irresistible opportunity they afforded him to execute such works. Dating from the early 1870s they clearly reflect the influence on his style of his visits to Italy in 1871 and 1873 where he studied Italian Renaissance paintings. The drawings are in his most 'Florentine' manner, notably the lively Ghirlandaio-style movement of the figures and the billowing Botticellian drapery with great emphasis on linear invention. 

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Auction Details

Tuesday 2 June 2026, 10.30am BST
Donnington Priory, Newbury, Berkshire RG14 2JE

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• Wednesday 13 May: 10am-4pm
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