In 1868 Burne-Jones signaled his intention to begin the present large canvas, which he continued to work on in 18, completed after a month’s work in 1877, and showed for the first time at the Grosvenor Gallery exhibition of 1878. He also made a drawing in pencil or chalk that was described in the catalogue of his 1898 estate as a 'study for Love in the ‘Chant D’Amour,’ 1865.' After he completed the watercolor that went to Graham, the artist made yet another, which is signed and dated 1866 and shows only the musician and the knight. About 1863–65 Burne-Jones made a preparatory study in pencil and red chalk for the musician, and, perhaps also at that time, a sepia wash and gouache study from a model of a boy in the pose, but not the costume, of the knight in armor (Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery). When, in June 1860, he married Georgiana Macdonald, the couple received as a wedding gift a small upright piano on the inside lid of which he painted an undated vignette showing an angel working the bellows of a portable organ played by a young woman (Victoria and Albert Museum, London). The theme was a refrain in Burne-Jones’s work over more than fifteen years. As it was hanging in Graham’s London drawing room, he offered to lend it back to the artist from August until November of 1868, when he would be in Scotland. Graham had bought the watercolor after it was exhibited in 1866 at the Old Watercolour Society, the first work of Burne-Jones that he acquired. In a letter of May 30, 1868, to Burne-Jones, William Graham accepted the painter’s offer of first refusal of a version in oil of his watercolor Le Chant d’Amour (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), or The Love Song, which is signed and dated 1865. He was created a baronet in 1894, and was also a recipient of the Légion d'Honneur, as his work was extremely popular in France, and in Italy as well, from a relatively early date. Between 18 Burne-Jones worked principally in watercolor, afterwards concentrating on oil painting.

He designed stained glass and tapestries for Morris' firm and was also a gifted book illustrator. The Victorian painter Edward Burne-Jones was a friend of William Morris from their time at Oxford, and later of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Ruskin.

Grosvenor gallery