Throughout his life Burne-Jones’s fey sense of humour found an outlet in caricatures, often sketched in the company of friends or in letters to them, and they counterpoint the seriousness of his studio work. Burne-Jones’s wife Georgiana was rather high-minded, and Graham Robertson believed that ‘EB-J’s surroundings were so extremely correct and proper that I think he had to break out occasionally’ (K. Preston, ed., Letters from Graham Robertson, 1953, p. 491). The caricatures often poke fun at bigness, in parody of Rubens. Burne-Jones was a thin man, but his friend William Morris was inclined to fat; here, Burne-Jones imagines Jane Morris a plump baby in the the Roman campagna, during a trip they all took together in 1873. Underlying the humour was gentle concern for his friends’ health.