“Joan of Arc” by Henry Holiday, 1839-1927 (original) (raw)

Joan of Arc

Henry Holiday, 1839-1927

1889

Pencil on paper

Approximately 42 x 18½ inches (107 x 47 cm).

These sketches were re-workings of designs for twelve tiles previously produced by Burne-Jones during May or June 1862. The embroideries were be made under Georgiana Burne-Jones’s supervision by the pupils at Winnington Hall School, the girls' school in Cheshire that Ruskin had been closely associated with since the late 1850s. This project fell through when Ruskin decided not to build his house. Burne-Jones reused his designs, however, for a series of stained-glass windows. Holidays later designs do not resemble those of Burne-Jones but his cartoon of Cleopatra somewhat resembles the wood engraving of this subject by John Everett Millais for “A Dream of Fair Women” for the Moxon Tennyson of 1857. — Dennis T. Lanigan