This pencil drawing by Edward Burne-Jones was a preliminary drawing for an illustration in William Morris’s Kelmscott Press edition of Sigurd the Volsung published in January 1898. The Kelmscott Press edition of Sigurd was first proposed in November 1891. At the time Burne-Jones was already working on the illustrations for the Kelmcott Press edition of The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, but agreed to provide 25 illustrations to the Sigurd. He found the subject much less congenial than working on Chaucer and his illustrations progressed slowly. Morris’s death in October 1896 put an end to the idea of a fully illustrated folio and in the final edition as printed, only two illustrations were used, ‘The Dwelling of Volsung’ (frontispiece) and ‘Gudrun Setting Fire to the Palace of Atli’. Another drawing, similar to this one, is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
