Study for 'The Sleeping Knights'

Study for 'The Sleeping Knights', dated 1870 and now in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, connects to Burne-Jones's sustained engagement with Arthurian and sleeping enchantment subjects that would culminate in the Briar Rose series twenty years later. Sleeping figures — knights, maidens, enchanted courtiers — recur throughout his work as images of suspended time, preserved beauty, and the threshold between consciousness and dream. The Arthurian context of sleeping knights connects to the legend of Arthur himself, asleep in Avalon awaiting England's need, as well as to the knights of the Grail quest. The Walker Art Gallery holds a significant collection of Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite works, making it an appropriate home for this early study.

A study of sleeping knights requires the visual construction of heavy, armour-clad figures in postures of repose: the challenge is to render armour's hard, reflective surfaces alongside the organic softness of sleeping faces. At study stage the drawing and compositional arrangement take priority over the finished surface quality of the final work.