Lot Essay
These panels were almost certainly painted to decorate a piece of 'art furniture' by the London firm of Collinson and Lock, for whom Murray carried out a number of such commissions. A corner-cupboard incorporating his painting of Lucretia, made by the firm to designs by William Godwin in 1873, is in the Detroit Institute of Arts (see In Pursuit of Beauty: Americans and the Aesthetic Movement, Metropolitan Museum, New York, 1987-7, p. 151, fig. 5.9; and Jeremy Cooper, Victorian and Edwardian Furniture and Interiors, 1987, pl. 330).
An Aesthetic Movement music cabinet with a panel of Orpheus and Euridice, which was sold at Christie's King Street on 16 February 1994, lot 32, is another example of the type of piece from which the present paintings derive. The cabinet was attributed to Daniel Cottier and the painting to Francis Lathrop, an American artist who, like Fairfax Murray, worked as a studio assistant to Burne-Jones.
An Aesthetic Movement music cabinet with a panel of Orpheus and Euridice, which was sold at Christie's King Street on 16 February 1994, lot 32, is another example of the type of piece from which the present paintings derive. The cabinet was attributed to Daniel Cottier and the painting to Francis Lathrop, an American artist who, like Fairfax Murray, worked as a studio assistant to Burne-Jones.