Wake, Dearest 1905

Edward Burne-Jones made this dreamy watercolor called 'Wake, Dearest' with a soft touch and a muted palette. There's a real sense of process here, like he's gently coaxing the image into being. The texture is so delicate; you can almost feel the grain of the paper. Those thin washes of color, especially in the drapery, create a luminous effect, as if the figures are emerging from a haze. Look closely at the way he's rendered the sleeping figure’s hair – those fine, almost feathery strokes give it a tangible sense of volume and light. It's so different from the figure draped in black, whose pose is more certain, more active. Burne-Jones reminds me a bit of Gustave Moreau, in the way he uses symbolism and creates these otherworldly scenes. Both artists were invested in the idea of art as a space for imagination and reverie, where the boundaries between reality and dream blur. The painting invites us to embrace ambiguity and multiple interpretations, leaving us to wonder about the nature of the scene.