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Commentary by Hilary Morgan

The emotional culmination of the Perseus Series is the 'Rock of Doom', where Perseus discovers the naked Andromeda left chained to a rock for a dragon's prey. The composition was completed twice, as a gouache (Southampton Art Gallery) and as an oil painting (1885-1888, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart). The present drawing dates from the 'conception of the series in the mid 1870s and is another fine example of Burne-jones's pencil style at the time. In the original scheme, Burne-Jones emphasised the decorative qualities of the composition by using the Medieval and Renaissance device of continuous narration'm which more than one episode from,a story appears on the same canvas. He combined the 'Rock of Doom' with the 'Doom Fulfilled' in which Perseus kills the monster. This can be seen in the modello in the Tate Gallery (TG 3458) and in an unfinished painting of circa 1876 (Art Gallery of South Australia). The present drawing duplicates the pose of Andromeda in the early versions, which was altered in the final canvases, suggesting that it was produced in 1875 or 1876 at the very beginning of Burne-Jones's work on the scheme.

Bibliography

Morgan, Hilary and Nahum, Peter. Burne-Jones, The Pre-Raphaelites and Their Century. London: Peter Nahum, 1989. Catalogue number 57.

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Last modified 2 January 2002