King René's Honeymoon - Study of Heads for King René and his Queen / Two Heads of a Wombat1864 Accession number: 1904P320 Pencil on paper. Width: 134 mm Height: 113 mm InformationIn 1861 the architect John Pollard Seddon (1827-1906) commissioned Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. to produce ten decorative panels, depicting the Fine and Applied Arts, for an oak cabinet of his own design (now at the V&A). On Brown's suggestion the four door panels were decorated with scenes from the honeymoon of the medieval King René of Anjou, an enthusiastic patron of the arts, whose life had been popularised by Sir Walter Scott in his novel 'Anne of Geierstein' (1829) (John P. Seddon, 'King René's Honeymoon Cabinet,' London, 1898, p.6). This is a study for 'Music' showing King René kissing his new wife as they sits opposite each other playing a conjoined, piano-like instrument. Burne-Jones designed 'Painting' and 'Sculpture' and Brown designed 'Architecture.' The cabinet was made by the furniture firm owned by Seddon's father and exhibited in the Medieval Court at the 1862 International Exhibition in London. On the back of this drawing are two sketches of an animal strongly resembling a wombat. In the 1860s Rossetti kept a menagerie of animals in his garden which included a wombat. These drawings may be sketches for some of the animals in the illustrations he designed for Christina Rossetti's 'Goblin market and other Poems' (pub. 1862).
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