Burne-Jones’s biographer Fiona MacCarthy (The Last Pre- Raphaelite, p 134) wrote that soon after Burne-Jones’s son Philip was born in 1861, his proud father related that their friends thought him ‘the prettiest boy known’ and that ‘Phil was to remain pretty, somewhat to his detriment’. This drawing was done when Philip was at Marlborough, a ‘particularly brutal boys’ public school’ (MacCarthy, p 259). William Morris had been to the same school and had been deeply unhappy, holding that he learned nothing there, because nothing was being taught. When the day

came for Philip to leave for school, Burne-Jones could hardly bear it and wrote to Rosalind Howard, ‘Today I carry Phil off to Marlborough and come back I suppose tomorrow. There are red eyes all up and down the house and Georgie is giving way in a manner unworthy of her Roman virtue’ (ALS September 1874, Castle Howard). MacCarthy described Phil’s four years at Marlborough as ‘a terrible ordeal for a nervous, spoilt and beautiful boy’ (p 259). The delicate technique of this drawing, which is so fine that it was once mis-catalogued as a silverpoint, suits the sensitivity of the sitter.