Jacob's Ladder

During the last months of his life, Burne-Jones was working on a set of illustrations to a Biblia Innocentium (Children's Bible), to be edited by his son-in-law, J.W. Mackail, and published by the Kelmscott Press. According to Lady Burne-Jones, the book 'was... to have contained upwards of two hundred pictures. Many of these were begun, but none quite finished' when the artist died unexpectedly on the night of 16 June 1898. Twenty-five designs to the first four chapters of Genesis were sufficiently advanced to be completed by Robert Catterson-Smith, who had worked with Burne-Jones on the illustrations to the Kelmscott Chaucer (1896), translating his pencil drawings into black outline suitable for engraving on wood. These designs were published by Longmans in 1902 under the title The Beginning of the World, and a facsimile reprint appeared in 1972.

The present drawing illustrates Genesis, chapter 28, and is clearly one of the designs for the Biblia Innocentium that were not completed by Catterson-Smith and published. Although Burne-Jones seems to have produced quite a number of these drawings, few of them are known today.