This is a version of a panel representing Architecture, painted by Brown in 1861 for a plan chest designed for his own use by the architect J.P. Seddon and made, as one of its earliest commissions, by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.. The chest, which was exhibited at the International Exhibition of 1862 and is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, is a massive piece in the extreme gothic taste, decorated with wood inlay and painted panels, symbolising the arts and crafts. The four most important panels, on the front, are Architecture by Brown, Music by Rossetti, and Painting and Sculpture by Burne-Jones. All take the form of incidents from the honeymoon of King René of Anjou, the father of Margaret of Anjou, wife of King Henry VI of England, and a character in Sir Walter Scott's novel Anne of Geierstein. As Brown himself wrote, King René 'was poet, painter, architect, sculptor, and musician, but most unfortunate in his political relations. Of course, as soon as married, he would build a new house, carve it and decorate it himself, and talk nothing but Art (except, indeed, love) all the honeymoon' (Hueffer, op. cit., p.200)

Brown pictured his hero and his wife studying the plans of their house at 'twilight, when the workmen are gone.' The design is in his most eccentric style (the style that so upset Ruskin), and surely embodies some idea of William and Jane Morris planning the famous Red House. A study for the panel, dated 1861, is in the Birmingham Art Gallery (351'27), and cartoons are in the British Museum and the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Another watercolour version, dated 1864 and virtually the same size as ours, is in the Tate (3229), and an oil version, also of 1864 (21 x 14in.), is recorded. Morris made stained-glass versions of all four 'King René' designs, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (see A.C. Sewter, The Stained Glass of William Morris and his Circle, I, 1974, col. pl. IV). Seddon published a booklet on his plan-chest, The King René's Honeymoon Cabinet, in 1898, and the chest is illustrated in Elizabeth Aslin, Nineteenth Century English Furniture, 1962, p.52.