Composite Drawing of a Stunner / A Victorian Woman in her Underwear, 1861-63 (pencil on...

The auctioneers at Sotheby's suggest that these Pre-Raphaelite ephemera were drawn by Burne-Jones and his friends, including William Morris, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown, after Burne-Jones had moved to Great Russell Street in 1861. The envelope in which they have been preserved bears the inscription 'Early meetings at Burne-Jones in Gt. Russell Street' and the name (in another hand) 'Lucy Falkener' (sic). Lucy Faulkner was the sister of Charles Faulkner, a contemporary of Morris and Burne-Jones at Oxford and a founding member of Morris & Co. The effect of the drawing is obtained by folding over and hiding each contributor's part to reveal finally an incongruous whole; the Surrealists were later to play such artistic games under the title of 'cadavre exquis' or 'exquisite corpse'.