Sideboard, deal, painted with ladies and animals by Edward Burne-Jones, British 1860.

Sideboard, rectangular with an open base, and two drawers and three cupboards in the upper section, the front painted with large scale figures on the theme of 'ladies and animals'.

Given by Mrs. J.W. Mackail

According to Georgiana Burne-Jones, .Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, vol. 1, 1904, pp. 206-7, Burne-Jones painted this sideboard in the week before his wedding in June 1860. The red-brown finish on the top and on the shelf at the bottom is similar to that used for the stand on the St. George Cabinet.

Edward and Georgiana Burne-Jones moved to The Grange, North End Road, Fulham, in 1867 and the sideboard is shown there, in the dining room, with a rectangular mirror above, in T.M. Rooke's watercolour of 1898 (private collection). The sideboard was given to the Museum in 1953 by Margaret Mackail, daughter of Edward and Georgiana.

In 1971 this cabinet was on display in the Green Dining Room, originally decorated by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. in 1866.

During the week before his wedding in June 1860, the artist Edward Burne-Jones painted a plain sideboard that he had in his possession, and later used it in his dining room. He described the subject of his painting as 'Ladies and animals...in various relations to each other'. The three panels on the front show ladies feeding pigs, parrot and fishes.

Burne-Jones had begun painting furniture a few years earlier when he shared a studio in Red Lion Square, London, with the designer William Morris. They were influenced by medieval furniture which was plain and strongly-built, but with a surface decoration of painting.

W.10-1953