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Burne-Jones
was born in Birmingham, the son of the owner of a small framing business.
His mother died within a week of his birth. He was educated at King Edward’s
School in Birmingham, and, since he was gifted at drawing, attended a government
School of Design on three evenings a week since 1848. In 1853 he went to
Exeter College, Oxford, with the intention of eventually entering the Church.
There he met William Morris, who was to become his lifelong friend and
an associate in a number of decorative projects.
As the result of seeing Rossetti’s
works, Burne-Jones and Morris became late recruits to Pre-Raphaelitism.
Early in 1856, Burne-Jones met Ruskin
and Rossetti and managed to persuade the latter to accept him as a pupil;
he and Morris left Oxford and started their artistic careers under Rossetti’s
guidance. His earliest paintings are carried out in watercolor. Burne-Jones
produced a number of versions of the ballad subject Fair Rosamond: Fair
Rosamond and Queen Eleonor. This story was very popular with
the Pre-Raphaelites and had already been used by Rossetti and Hughes.
Meanwhile the friends founded a decorating business, the company William
Morris & Co. Burne-Jones was one of the directors and his prolific
inspiration and rapidity of execution made him of crucial value for the
firm. While his painting moved inevitably away from the influence of Rossetti
and the Pre-Raphaelites, his decorative work remained a continuing contribution
to the evolution of Pre-Raphaelite design. He made designs of tapestries
and stained glass windows. A number of the decorative designs were turned
into paintings, rather than vice versa. For example, King Mark and
La Belle Iseult (1862) originated as a stained glass design and
is in fact painted on top of a stained-glass carton.
From the mid-1860s, Burne-Jones's paintings become larger and more monumental,
suggesting his interest in Botticelli,
Mantegna
and Michelangelo.
Burne-Jones was an extremely hard worker and, in consequence, a very prolific
artist. His Pre-Raphaelite pieces form a relatively small part of his total
work. Some art historians consider Burne-Jones's Pre-Raphaelite phase an
attack of ‘Pre-Raphaelite measles’, identifying him rather as a romantic,
a symbolist and an aesthete. Nevertheless, the influence of Rossetti
was crucial to the development of Burne-Jones’s poetic imagination. His
early works, painted under the personal guidance of Rossetti from similar
medieval and literary sources, or resulting from Burne-Jones’s own fascination
with fifteenth century Florentine art are a valuable contribution to PreRaphaelitism.
And, of course, his paintings influenced the Aesthetic movement and Art
Nouveau design to a great extend. In 1890, Burne-Jones was elected to the
Royal Academy, but resigned only three years later.
Notes
Katie Lewis. A very Whistlerian picture,
a 'harmony in orange', by the artist who sided with Ruskin
at the Ruskin-Whistler
trial. Katie Lewis was the recipient of the famous 'Letters to Katie'
and she was the daughter of Sir George Lewis, an eminent lawyer.
See: Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Portrait
of Katie Lewis.
The Wheel of Fortune. Fortune,
a goddess in antiquity, or a dame in the Middle Ages, is turning her wheel;
with its every turn a fallen may rise back again, while those on the peak
of glory and happiness may fall down.
See: Sir Edward Burne-Jones. The
Wheel of Fortune.
Bibliography:
Burne-Jones. by M. Harrison & Waters B. London 1973.
Edward
Burne-Jones: A Biography. by Penelope Fitzgerald. Viking Press.Reprint
edition. 1990.
Burne-Jones and Williams Morris in Oxford and the Surrounding Area.
by Ann S. Dean. Art Books Intl Ltd. 1996.
Painting of Europe. XIII-XX centuries. Encyclopedic Dictionary.
Moscow. Iskusstvo. 1999.
Victorian Painting. by Christopher Wood. Bulfinch Press. 1999.
Edward
Burne-Jones, Victorian Artist-Dreamer by Stephen Wildman. Yale
Univ Pr, 1998.
Sir
Edward Burne-Jones by Russell Ash. Chrysalis Books, 1997.
May
and Amy : A True Story of Family, Forbidden Love, and the Secret Lives
of May Gaskell, Her Daughter Amy, and Sir Edward Burne-Jones
by Josceline Dimbleby. Harmony, 2005.
The
Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Watts: Symbolism in Britain, 1860-1910
by Andrew Wilton, Barbara Bryant, Robert Upstone. Flammarion, 1997.
Tate
British Artists: Edward Burne-Jones by David Peters Corbett.
Tate, 2004.
Memorials
of Edward Burne-Jones: 1833-1867 (Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones)
by Georgiana Burne-Jones. Lund Humphries Publishers, 1993.