Portrait of Margaret Mackail, the Artist's Daughter

Burne-Jones’s oil paintings often view their subjects through the lens of medieval or Renaissance art and are marked by a dreamy, otherworldly quality. With its restrained composition and muted scheme, this unfinished portrait of the artist’s daughter Margaret is no different. It was probably executed around the time of her marriage. Perhaps his choice to depict her within a walled garden and wearing blue, a color associated with the Virgin Mary, suggests some of a father’s conflicted feelings on losing a daughter to a new husband.