Male - Study of southern Italian peasant boy seen to the front

This watercolor study of a southern Italian peasant boy made in 1860 documents Burne-Jones's direct observation of southern European rural types during his second Italian journey—or reflects preparatory interest in such physiognomies for his figure painting. Burne-Jones rarely worked from southern Italian models, making this study an unusual document of encounter with figures outside the medieval and classical sources that dominated his imagination. The Birmingham Museums Trust holds it as part of their comprehensive collection of his drawings and studies. The boy's identity as a 'southern Italian peasant' marks him as a regional 'type' in the Victorian ethnographic sensibility, representative of an ancient Mediterranean people relatively unchanged since antiquity—a living link to the classical past that Burne-Jones sought in Italian painting. Studies like this reveal the empirical observation underlying his idealized figure constructions.

Watercolor on paper with the directness of a life study made from observation. Burne-Jones's early watercolor technique at this date is freer and more exploratory than his later highly finished works, capturing physiognomic character through responsive line and transparent washes rather than constructed idealization.