Alice, la Belle Pèlerine

In 1856, while studying theology at Oxford, the twenty-three-year-old Burne-Jones toured Gothic cathedrals in France with his friend William Morris, consulted with Dante Gabriel Rossetti in London, and decided to leave college and pursue art. John Ruskin advised him to look closely at Albrecht Dürer, and the present drawing demonstrates the influence of that German master, combined with aspects of Rossetti’s distinct draftsmanship and vision of female beauty.
Thomas Malory's chivalric poem "La Morte D’Arthur" describes Alice la Belle Pèlerine (Alice the beautiful pilgrim) as "passing fair" and notes that her moniker came courtesy of her father, Duke Ansirus who "was a great pilgrim, for every third year he would be at Jerusalem." An emblematic shell hangs at Alice's neck as she pursues her own quest which is one of the heart. At the center of a group of girls and young women, she processes through a medieval interior, perhaps headed out to the lush summer landscape seen through an unglazed window to watch knights joust for her hand. Worked in ink on vellum, the drawing comes from an early group made between 1858 and 1860, praised by Ruskin as "marvels in finish and imaginative detail." Minute touches weave patterns and describe elements that imply, rather than specify, a narrative. In some areas, the artist scraped away the surface to produce a lighter background and softer ink effects. Alice's head and shoulders are drawn on a separate piece of vellum affixed to the main sheet.