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Lot Essay
With its raised arms and rich drapery, this figure appears to be a study for the angel in Burne-Jones's large scale tapestry The Failure of St Lancelot to enter the Chapel of the Holy Grail. One of the six narrative panels in the Quest for the Holy Grail tapestries executed by Morris & Co in 1890, The Failure of St Lancelot was commissioned by William Knox D'Arcy for the dining room of Stanmore Hall, Middlesex.
The series represents the climax of the collaboration between William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones on the design and manufacture of tapestry, and are one of the greatest achievements of the Arts and Crafts movement. They are also the ultimate expression of the friends' lifelong devotion to Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, discovered by them in 1855 when they were still undergraduates at Oxford, and the subject of the famous murals in the Oxford Union that they helped to paint two years later under the leadership of their hero, D.G. Rossetti. At the end of his life, Burne-Jones returned to early sources of inspiration, above all a revived feeling for Arthurian romance and mysticism.
The series represents the climax of the collaboration between William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones on the design and manufacture of tapestry, and are one of the greatest achievements of the Arts and Crafts movement. They are also the ultimate expression of the friends' lifelong devotion to Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, discovered by them in 1855 when they were still undergraduates at Oxford, and the subject of the famous murals in the Oxford Union that they helped to paint two years later under the leadership of their hero, D.G. Rossetti. At the end of his life, Burne-Jones returned to early sources of inspiration, above all a revived feeling for Arthurian romance and mysticism.