(Sir) Edward Coley Burne-Jones - The Star of Bethlehem

watercolour and bodycolour heightened with gold
64.5 x 98.5 cm
1887

Painted in preparation for a tapestry to be made at the works set up at Merton Abbey by William Morris in 1881 probably for Exeter College, Oxford (where both Burne-Jones and morris had been undergraduates).

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery now has the largest collection of works by Burne-Jones in the world, including the massive watercolour Star of Bethlehem, commissioned for the Gallery in 1897.

This version was sold by Sotherby's in 1993.