Description
'Medea' a rare Morris & Co three tile panel, designed by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, glazed earthenware, painted with a figure holding a pot and a sprig of leaves, framed in original wood frame stamped Morris & Co to reverse, damages tiles 45 x 15cm.
Provenance
Mrs Lucius Gubbins, after 1934
Private collection
Exhibited
Morris Centenary Exhibition Victoria & Albert Museum, London 1934
William Morris Tiles, William Morris Gallery 1996-7 catalogue number 80, page 23
Literature
Richard & Hilary Myers William Morris Tiles, Richard Dennis Publications, page 90 plate 34b this panel illustrated
This design is closely based upon the painting Morgan Le Fay painted by Burne-Jones in 1862 now in the Cecil French Bequest Gallery Collection of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. The pot, in the Le Fay painting contains a magic potion - here on the tile design it probably contains the poison Medea will spread on Glauce's golden robes.
