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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41583 ***
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 41583-h.htm or 41583-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41583/41583-h/41583-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41583/41583-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive. See
+      http://archive.org/details/burnejonesocad00balduoft
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+      Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
+
+      Every effort has been made to replicate this text as
+      faithfully as possible.
+
+
+
+
+
+Masterpieces in Colour
+Edited by - -
+T. Leman Hare
+
+BURNE-JONES
+1833-1898
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+"MASTERPIECES IN COLOUR" SERIES
+
+
+    ARTIST.               AUTHOR.
+
+    VELAZQUEZ.            S. L. BENSUSAN.
+    REYNOLDS.             S. L. BENSUSAN.
+    TURNER.               C. LEWIS HIND.
+    ROMNEY.               C. LEWIS HIND.
+    GREUZE.               ALYS EYRE MACKLIN.
+    BOTTICELLI.           HENRY B. BINNS.
+    ROSSETTI.             LUCIEN PISSARRO.
+    BELLINI.              GEORGE HAY.
+    FRA ANGELICO.         JAMES MASON.
+    REMBRANDT.            JOSEF ISRAELS.
+    LEIGHTON.             A. LYS BALDRY.
+    RAPHAEL.              PAUL G. KONODY.
+    HOLMAN HUNT.          MARY E. COLERIDGE.
+    TITIAN.               S. L. BENSUSAN.
+    MILLAIS.              A. LYS BALDRY.
+    CARLO DOLCI.          GEORGE HAY.
+    GAINSBOROUGH.         MAX ROTHSCHILD.
+    TINTORETTO.           S. L. BENSUSAN.
+    LUINI.                JAMES MASON.
+    FRANZ HALS.           EDGCUMBE STALEY.
+    VAN DYCK.             PERCY M. TURNER.
+    LEONARDO DA VINCI.    M. W. BROCKWELL.
+    RUBENS.               S. L. BENSUSAN.
+    WHISTLER.             T. MARTIN WOOD.
+    HOLBEIN.              S. L. BENSUSAN.
+    BURNE-JONES.          A. LYS BALDRY.
+    VIGÉE LE BRUN.        C. HALDANE MACFALL.
+    CHARDIN.              PAUL G. KONODY.
+    FRAGONARD.            C. HALDANE MACFALL.
+    MEMLINC.              W. H. J. & J. C. WEALE.
+    CONSTABLE.            C. LEWIS HIND.
+    RAEBURN.              JAMES L. CAW.
+    JOHN S. SARGENT.      T. MARTIN WOOD.
+    LAWRENCE.             S. L. BENSUSAN.
+    DÜRER.                H. E. A. FURST.
+    MILLET.               PERCY M. TURNER.
+    WATTEAU.              C. LEWIS HIND.
+    COROT.                SIDNEY ALLNUTT.
+
+_Others in Preparation_.
+
+      *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+[Illustration: PLATE I.--THE DEPTHS OF THE SEA. Frontispiece
+
+(In the possession of R. H. Benson, Esq.)
+
+Apart from its technical beauty and its charm of design, this picture
+has a special interest as the only contribution which the artist ever
+made to the exhibitions of the Royal Academy. It was shown at Burlington
+House in 1886, and was painted purposely, during the months that
+intervened between his election as an Associate in the summer of 1885
+and the opening of the 1886 exhibition. In the treatment of the subject
+there is a touch of slightly grim humour, unusual in the art of
+Burne-Jones, a humour which finds expression particularly in the face of
+the mermaid, who drags a human being to her cave at the bottom of the
+sea without thinking or caring that her sport means death to him.]
+
+
+BURNE-JONES
+
+by
+
+A. LYS BALDRY
+
+Illustrated with Eight Reproductions in Colour
+
+[Illustration: IN SEMPITERNUM.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London: T. C. & E. C. Jack
+New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+    Plate
+
+       I. The Depths of the Sea                       Frontispiece
+            In the possession of R. H. Benson, Esq.
+                                                              Page
+      II. Sidonia von Bork                                      14
+            In the possession of W. Graham Robertson, Esq.
+
+     III. Sponsa di Libano                                      24
+            Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
+
+      IV. Sibylla Delphica                                      34
+            Manchester Art Gallery
+
+       V. The Mill                                              40
+            South Kensington Museum
+
+      VI. King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid                     50
+            The Tate Gallery
+
+     VII. Danae (The Tower of Brass)                            60
+            Glasgow Corporation Art Gallery
+
+    VIII. The Enchantments of Nimue                             70
+            South Kensington Museum
+
+[Illustration: Drawing of Burne-Jones]
+
+The place which should be assigned to Sir Edward Burne-Jones in the
+history of modern art is by no means easy to define, for his work with
+its unusual qualities of intention and achievement does not lend itself
+readily to classification. At the outset of his career he might with
+some justice have been numbered with the Pre-Raphaelites, because the
+first influences to which he responded were those which directed the
+Pre-Raphaelite movement, and because in his earliest productions he
+showed that these influences had counted for much in the shaping of his
+æsthetic inclinations. But as he developed he made plainer and more
+convincing the assertion of his individuality, he ceased to be simply a
+follower of a movement, and evolved for himself a system of æsthetic
+practice which was personal both in aim and in manner of expression.
+That in formulating this system he borrowed much from early Italian art,
+that he based himself upon certain remote masters, with whose primitive
+methods he was deeply in sympathy, can scarcely be denied; but in this
+reference to the past he did not show the blind readiness to imitate
+which is the vice of the copyist; he altered and adapted, varied this
+principle and modified that detail, until he had with the material he
+collected built up a quite complete superstructure, which was Italian
+only in its foundation. And in this process of building up he was guided
+surely enough by a right instinct for decorative propriety, an instinct
+which was partly innate, partly the outcome of associations by which he
+was largely affected throughout his life. If his personality had been
+less strong, or his æsthetic preference less defined, these associations
+might easily have cramped his imagination and narrowed him into the
+repetition of a set formula; but his intelligence was so keen and his
+conviction concerning his artistic mission was so clear, that he was
+able to overcome all the obstacles by which he might have been turned
+from his right course. His career, thanks to the consistency with which
+he worked, became a record of continuous effort to realise an ideal that
+lacked neither nobility nor intellectual variety.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE II.--SIDONIA VON BORK
+
+(In the possession of W. Graham Robertson, Esq.)
+
+As an early picture, painted while Burne-Jones was still under the
+influence of Rossetti, "Sidonia von Bork" illustrates characteristically
+a particular phase of the artist's practice; one of much importance in
+the evolution of his art. "Sidonia von Bork" was one of the characters
+in a romance called "Sidonia the Sorceress," which was written by a
+Swiss clergyman. The book was a favourite of Rossetti's, so that
+evidently Burne-Jones was influenced by his master both in his choice
+and in his treatment of a subject from its pages. A reprint of the story
+was issued by William Morris from the Kelmscott Press.]
+
+It is probable that some of his consistency, and a very large part of
+his artistic conviction, came from the manner of his preparation for the
+profession in which he attained such exceptional success. Unlike most
+artists he did not begin by acquiring a knowledge of the mechanism of
+painting, and did not proceed to apply trained technical skill in
+experiments intended to determine the direction in which he might
+practise profitably in after life. In his case the process was reversed,
+for his direction was settled before he had learned even the
+rudiments of pictorial practice, and the time which other men would have
+given to experiment he devoted to seeking how he would best realise the
+ideas that were finally formed in his mind. Tentative work, to test the
+popular point of view, he never produced; he began straight away with
+what he knew to be his right material, and the only difference which is
+to be noticed between his first and his last paintings is a difference
+in technical facility. The uncertainties of handling in his earlier
+pictures disappeared in those which he painted in later life, but of
+mental uncertainty no trace is at any time to be discovered.
+
+Yet the curious fact must be noted that this artist, with his strong
+personality, his great gifts, and his absorbing devotion to a splendid
+ideal, chose his profession by a kind of afterthought--almost by
+accident. There is no record in his case of a boyhood spent in struggles
+against a fate which seemed to forbid him all satisfaction of his
+dearest aspirations; there is not even evidence that he had any artistic
+aspirations at all. He grew up, practically to manhood, before he
+discovered that he had either the wish or the capacity to attempt any
+form of æsthetic expression, and his powers lay completely dormant
+through all those youthful years which have been to most other artists a
+time of longing after the apparently unattainable and of striving to
+follow the promptings of nature and temperament.
+
+This strange torpidity of the artistic side of his intelligence was, no
+doubt, due to the surroundings among which he passed his childhood. He
+was born on August 28, 1833, at Birmingham, where there was in those
+days little enough to foster a love of art, and in the respectable but
+dull atmosphere of a middle-class home he had no chance of any
+awakening. His mental activity, however, was shown in the zest with
+which he threw himself into the study of the classics during the seven
+or eight years that he spent at King Edward's School. He gained at that
+time a very thorough knowledge of the classic writings in general and of
+classic mythology in particular, which was amplified in after life by
+constant reading; and he acquired a student-like habit of research into
+the learning of the past which served him well when the time came for
+him to picture the fancies that were forming in his mind.
+
+But at first the purpose of his education was to fit him for the walk of
+life which his father wished him to follow. He was, it was decided, to
+enter the Church, and in 1853, having won a scholarship at Exeter
+College, he went up to Oxford ready and willing enough to work for
+success in the profession which seemed so well suited to him. He had at
+that time no feeling that his real vocation lay in quite another
+direction, or that there was any different way in which his studious
+mind might be exercised. The idea of taking orders was not uncongenial
+to him, and he began his Oxford life in no spirit of rebellion against
+the career which had been mapped out by his elders.
+
+At Oxford, however, came his awakening. He found himself in contact
+there with quite a new phase of existence, in an atmosphere which was
+made doubly impressive by its unlikeness to any that he had previously
+known, and among surroundings which by their novelty had a great power
+to stimulate his imagination. Under such conditions the expansion of his
+mind was unusually rapid, and the arousing of his dormant æsthetic
+instincts followed immediately. This latter development of a side of his
+nature, of which previously he could have been, at best, only dimly
+conscious, was greatly assisted by his friendship with a remarkable man
+who had entered Exeter College on the same day that he did, and who had
+come to Oxford with the same intention of eventually taking holy orders.
+This man, William Morris, was destined to play a most important part in
+British art activities, and by his militant æstheticism to bring about
+many momentous changes in the public taste; and the chance which brought
+him and Edward Burne-Jones together, when they were both at the most
+impressionable period of life, was especially fortunate.
+
+The association between the two undergraduates quickly became one of the
+closest intimacy. They had mentally much in common, and in them both was
+a strain of enthusiasm and poetic fantasy which was an inheritance from
+a Celtic ancestry--they were both Welshmen by descent--and by which
+their whole attitude to modern existence was determined. Morris had,
+perhaps, the more vehement personality and the greater share of the
+fighting instinct, while Burne-Jones was more of a dreamer and readier
+to occupy himself with abstract fancies; but these small differences of
+temperament made their friendship the more mutually valuable, and
+helped appreciably to increase the influence which the one had on the
+other. At any rate, these days at Oxford saw the beginning of a kind of
+mental partnership which gave ultimately to the world a great artist and
+a brilliant leader of a wide art movement which has since done much to
+alter the whole spirit of domestic decoration in this country.
+
+A more immediate effect of the intimacy between Morris and Burne-Jones
+was, however, the weakening of the intention which had brought them to
+the university. The more they dreamed and talked the further their idea
+of finding a career in the Church receded, and the stronger grew the
+desire which both of them felt for the pursuit of some form of art.
+While they were thus hesitating over their plans for the future,
+Burne-Jones received a sort of revelation which fixed finally his
+half-formed intention to become a painter. He saw by chance some works
+by Rossetti, an illustration to a poem by William Allingham and a
+water-colour, "Dante's celebration of Beatrice's Birthday," and these,
+with some notable Pre-Raphaelite pictures, like Holman Hunt's "Light of
+the World" and "The Christian Priest escaping from the Druids," which
+were then at Oxford, gave him a veritable inspiration. For Rossetti in
+particular he conceived immediately a passionate adoration, and to sit
+at the feet of such a master seemed to him the noblest aim in life. From
+that moment, indeed, his fate was decided, though some little time had
+yet to elapse before his dreams could be realised and his plans
+could be put into working shape.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE III.--SPONSA DI LIBANO
+
+(Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool)
+
+The first idea for the "Sponsa di Libano" was embodied in one of a
+series of pencil designs from the "Song of Solomon," which were prepared
+by Burne-Jones in 1876. This picture, the only one out of the series
+which he actually completed pictorially, was exhibited at the New
+Gallery in 1891. The motive of the composition is explained in the text
+which the original drawing illustrated: "Awake, O North Wind; and come,
+thou South; blow upon my garden that the spices thereof may flow out."
+In the treatment of the subject the artist's poetic fancy and sense of
+decorative arrangement are particularly well displayed.]
+
+For the abandonment of all the ideas which had brought him to the
+university was no small matter and not to be lightly undertaken. He had
+to think of the disappointment at home which such action on his part
+would cause, and he had also to consider what would be his own position
+while he was preparing himself for a profession of which he had not so
+far had the smallest practical experience. So, with little heart in his
+work, he went on reading for his degree until the winter of 1855, when
+he came up to London with the intention of seeing in the flesh the man
+whom he had hitherto worshipped afar off. He was introduced to Rossetti
+at the house of Mr. Vernon Lushington, and by the kindly painter, who
+discerned the promise in the young man's tentative drawings, he was
+given the heartiest encouragement. A little later he laid before
+Rossetti all his hopes and fears, his doubts whether or not he would be
+right in leaving Oxford with the purpose which had taken him there still
+unfulfilled, and his desire to devote himself irrevocably to the
+artistic calling; and instead of suggestions of such compromises as
+prudence might have dictated, he received advice to lose no time in
+entering upon the career for which he was plainly destined by nature and
+inclination.
+
+Rossetti's interest in his young admirer was no momentary matter; he
+backed up the advice he had offered by taking him as a pupil and by
+aiding him in many ways to gain a footing in the art world. When
+Burne-Jones, having at last shaken the dust of Oxford off his feet,
+settled in London early in 1856, he found Rossetti quite ready to
+supervise his education and to lead him to that fuller knowledge of art
+practice which he so sorely lacked. The method of education adopted
+departed very definitely from accustomed lines; it did not involve
+attendance at any art school, and it imposed no prolonged course of
+drawing from antique figures or of painting still-life studies from
+groups of ill-assorted objects. On the contrary, the pupil was
+encouraged to begin at what would be considered by academic teachers
+the wrong end of things--to struggle, all unversed as he was in
+technicalities, with the difficulties of creative effort. Rossetti's
+studio was thrown open to him so that he might watch the progress of
+the pictures which were on the easel, and a number of the master's
+drawings and studies were lent to him to help him in his work at home;
+but what training he received was more in the nature of sympathetic
+guidance in his attempts at self-expression than of formal direction
+along the lines of a recognised school system. Its good effects were
+shown in the manner of the young man's development and in the rapid
+growth of his individuality; its bad effects in the persistence of
+defects of draughtsmanship and brushwork, which were overcome at last by
+his extraordinary industry and dogged determination to master all the
+difficulties of his craft.
+
+To his care and advice concerning his pupil's manner of working Rossetti
+added consideration for his financial position. Burne-Jones, with but
+slender resources and with little chance as yet of earning the means of
+support, was having a somewhat hard struggle, which Rossetti did his
+best to relieve by introducing him to friends who would interest
+themselves in him, and by helping him to get such work as he was capable
+of carrying out. One important commission was obtained about the end of
+1856, and this commission deserves special mention because it gave
+Burne-Jones his first experience in a branch of design in which he was
+destined to become an acknowledged master. Messrs. Powell, the
+glass-makers, who were making great efforts to improve the quality of
+stained glass, had applied to Rossetti for a design for a window. He
+declined to undertake this work, and recommended his pupil instead; and
+Burne-Jones accordingly prepared a design which was not only accepted
+by the firm but enthusiastically approved by Ruskin, who was, so
+Rossetti declared in a letter written at the time, "driven wild with
+joy" by the merit and quality of the work. This cartoon was followed
+during the next three or four years by several others drawn for the same
+firm.
+
+Much that is important in the record of the painter's life is to be
+assigned to this short period between the beginning of 1857 and the end
+of 1860. In addition to his designs for stained glass, he produced a
+large number of pen-and-ink and water-colour drawings, and made his
+first experiments in oil-painting; and he took part in the decoration of
+the library of the Oxford Union, an ambitious scheme entered into by
+Rossetti at the suggestion of Mr. Woodward, the architect of the
+building, and carried out, despite many unexpected difficulties, by
+Rossetti himself and a band of enthusiastic young artists. These
+decorations, which unfortunately fell into a condition of hopeless decay
+soon after they were completed, took some six months to execute, and he
+was engaged upon his share of the work until the early part of 1859. In
+the autumn of that year he paid his first visit to Italy and studied
+those early Italian masters with whom, as his after work proved, he was
+so deeply and intelligently in sympathy. This visit, indeed, brought
+about a marked change in his artistic outlook and helped to lead him
+away from the Gothic tendencies which he had first shown--probably as a
+result of his association with Morris--into a far more pronounced
+inclination for the Italian manner of design. He was married in the
+summer of 1860 to Miss Georgina Macdonald, about a month after
+Rossetti's marriage to Miss Siddal; and in taking this step he certainly
+showed that he had confidence in his professional prospects, a
+confidence which was justified by the position he had already made for
+himself.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE IV.--SIBYLLA DELPHICA
+
+(Manchester Art Gallery)
+
+In this painting of the Delphic oracle Burne-Jones made no attempt to
+reconstruct archæologically an incident from classic times. The
+symbolism of the subject appealed to him rather than its possibilities
+of being represented realistically, and he treated it in a manner
+entirely personal, with strength and decision, but with exquisite
+tenderness of poetic sentiment as well. The picture has a certain
+intensity of feeling that is especially convincing, and its fine
+draughtsmanship, splendid colour, and well-considered suggestion of
+movement make it technically of very great importance.]
+
+The year 1861 must be particularly noted because it marks the
+commencement of an undertaking with which Burne-Jones was closely
+associated for the rest of his life. William Morris, who had also left
+Oxford in 1856 without waiting to take his degree, had gone for rather
+less than a year into the office of George Edmund Street, the well-known
+architect, with some idea of adopting that profession; and then,
+becoming quickly disillusioned, had after some experiments in painting
+settled down for a while to literary work. In 1859 he married and went
+to live in a house which had been built for him at Bexley Heath; and it
+is said that the difficulty he experienced in getting, for the fitting
+up of this house, things which would please his fastidious taste and
+gratify his intense love of beauty, induced him to consider whether he
+could not actively intervene in the much-needed reformation of the
+decorative arts. At any rate, less than two years after his marriage, he
+was busy with the details of a scheme which was ambitious enough to
+satisfy even his love of big things and in which there were endless
+possibilities.
+
+This scheme took definite form towards the end of 1861, when the firm
+of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Co. was started in Red Lion Square.
+Burne-Jones, naturally enough, was an active sympathiser with the plans
+of William Morris, and he showed his sympathy in the most practical
+manner by putting his talents as a designer at the disposal of the firm.
+From that time onwards he produced in ever-increasing numbers designs
+for all kinds of decorative work, stained glass, tapestries,
+embroideries, book illustration, &c., in which his amazing fertility of
+imagination and exquisite powers of expression had the fullest scope.
+The sum total of the work, for which he was responsible during the
+period of nearly forty years over which his intimate connection with the
+Morris business extended, was almost incredibly large, and proves
+convincingly the strenuousness of his lifelong effort.
+
+For it must be remembered that this mass of decorative work did not by
+any means represent the whole of his achievement, but was, in fact,
+brought into existence in the intervals of his not less remarkable
+activity as a picture painter. The number of his finished pictures in
+different mediums was about two hundred, and his cartoons for stained
+glass alone make a list of a thousand or more; when to these are added
+his designs for other purposes, his sketches and studies, and the rough
+notes by which he gave the first visible shape to the mental images
+which he proposed to put later on into a completed form, the result
+arrived at is simply bewildering. Only by the most unremitting industry
+could he have done so much, and only a man with an abnormally prolific
+imagination and extraordinary powers of invention could have kept up as
+he did the high standard of his art.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE V.--THE MILL
+
+(South Kensington Museum)
+
+This picture is one of those on which Burne-Jones worked at intervals
+for several years. Commenced in 1870, and taken up and set aside time
+after time, it was not exhibited until 1882, when it appeared at the
+Grosvenor Gallery. It is an example, and a very attractive one, of the
+daintier side of the artist's practice, a decorative composition planned
+with masterly restraint and with a wholly sympathetic understanding of
+the charm of pure and unforced sentiment. It has both grace and
+distinction.]
+
+The pictorial work of Burne-Jones during the earlier 'sixties marked
+well the manner in which he was finding his way to the full avowal of
+his artistic creed. At first he was, as might have been expected,
+frankly inclined to imitate Rossetti, and to follow closely in methods
+and sentiment the master whom he worshipped and from whom he had
+received such invaluable assistance. But gradually this influence waned,
+as increasing confidence in his own powers enabled him to assert more
+clearly his individual view of his æsthetic responsibilities, and as the
+widening of his experience opened up to him fresh aspects of the
+artistic problems with which he had to deal. His development was, no
+doubt, much assisted by a second visit which he paid to Italy in the
+spring of 1862, a visit in which he had as his companion Ruskin, with
+whom he was by then on terms of intimacy. He stayed first at Milan and
+then went on to Venice, where he remained for some while making copies
+of Tintoretto and other masters for Ruskin, and studying for his own
+instruction and enjoyment the works of the earlier masters generally and
+of Carpaccio particularly.
+
+During these earlier years he confined himself almost entirely to
+working in water-colours, though by his way of using the medium he
+gained technical results which had more the strength and richness of
+oils than the delicate transparency of water-colour. The few essays he
+made in oil-painting at this time were not pictures for exhibition
+purposes but pure decorations, like the panels for a painted coffer
+designed by William Morris, and a triptych, with the "Annunciation" as
+the central panel, and the "Adoration of the Magi" on the wings, which
+was commissioned by Mr. Bodley for St. Paul's Church at Brighton.
+Definite recognition of the position he had gained among the younger
+water-colourists came at the beginning of 1864, when he was elected,
+with Fred Walker, an associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Water
+Colours. He was advanced to full membership of the Society in 1868, but
+resigned in 1870 because a foolish accusation of impropriety was brought
+against one of the compositions he exhibited. He returned, however, in
+1886 and remained a member till his death.
+
+By the paintings he showed in the gallery of the "Old Society" he much
+increased his reputation among discriminating art lovers as an artist of
+no ordinary importance. People who had known nothing of his work before
+found something so new in manner and so distinctive in purpose in the
+achievements of this creator of poetic fantasies that he was given more
+attention than usually comes to a man who sets before the public
+things of an unaccustomed type. That he amply deserved this attention
+cannot be questioned, for already he had acquired sufficient command
+over the technicalities of water-colour to enable him to put into
+a quite convincing form fancies which needed particular delicacy of
+interpretation. Of course, he had still very much to learn--no one knew
+better than he did how necessary was strenuous labour to overcome his
+deficiencies as a craftsman--but his deep sincerity gave character and
+meaning to his paintings, and the poetic beauty of his pictorial
+inventions fully excused what defects there were in his executive
+methods.
+
+Indeed, to this early period can be assigned several of the works on
+which his reputation rests most securely to-day--his "Fair Rosamond,"
+for instance, his first painting of "The Annunciation," a subject which
+he treated more than once, and his exquisite picture of "The Merciful
+Knight," in which there was no trace left of Rossetti's direction, but
+instead a clear expression of a quite personal view of art. No better
+proof could have been given of the strength of his character than was
+afforded by the rapidity with which he found his own way, and by the
+completeness of his emancipation from the influence of a man who was
+both his master and his friend--an influence which plainly dominated him
+when he painted his earliest water-colours of "Clara von Bork" and
+"Sidonia von Bork," both of which were entirely in Rossetti's manner.
+But in the three or four years which intervened between the production
+of these two little pictures and the completion of the far more
+ambitious composition, "The Merciful Knight," he had learned the secret
+of his own powers, and he had found how unnecessary it was for him to
+lean for support upon any one else.
+
+With this knowledge of himself, and with this consciousness of his
+capacity to take an independent position in the art world, came an
+increase of his activity as a painter. His water-colours became more
+numerous and more important, and he began to paint in oils several large
+pictures which he worked at with characteristic patience, setting them
+aside often for quite considerable periods and returning to them every
+now and again as opportunity offered. His manner of working, indeed,
+showed plainly the fertility of his mind; new ideas occurred to him in
+rapid succession, and his habit was to put them into a first rough shape
+on paper or canvas and to leave them to be carried to completion by slow
+stages with often long intervals between. One result of his method was
+that he frequently repeated the same subject with variations in
+treatment that were the outcome of some fresh consideration of the
+motive--each repetition, however, was an independent conception, not a
+mere reproduction of what he had done before.
+
+But there was another result which must be noted, because it has to be
+taken into account in any attempt to make a chronological list of his
+paintings or to define the character of his art at different
+periods--the works he exhibited were not put before the public in
+anything like the order of their production. Sometimes a picture which
+had been painted only a few months before was shown with one which had
+been for years in his studio awaiting some comparatively small additions
+to bring it to absolute completeness; sometimes all the things he
+exhibited in a particular year were new works; sometimes old ones which
+had been taken up and put aside over and over again. Consequently, it
+is useless to try to classify his productions exactly, and it is
+hopeless to base any theories about his development as an artist upon
+the sequence of his public appearances. All that can be said is that his
+evolution was steady and progressive, and that his apparent reversions
+now and again to his earlier manner were due not to any halting in his
+conviction but simply to the fact that some piece of work which had been
+lying by, possibly for years, had at last been finished and exhibited.
+Practically the only periods which can be recognised in his art are the
+comparatively brief one when he was definitely under Rossetti's
+influence, and the far longer one when he was working out his own
+destiny unassisted. A certain inclination towards Rossetti's colour
+feeling he retained for some while after he had freed himself of the
+technical mannerisms which he derived from his master, and for nearly
+twenty years traces of this colour sympathy can be detected, but for the
+rest of his career he was as individual in his management of colour as
+he was in design or in the sentiment of his work.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VI.--KING COPHETUA AND THE BEGGAR MAID
+
+(The Tate Gallery)
+
+The old story of the king who succumbed to the charms of a simple beggar
+maid has inspired many artists, but none have rivalled Burne-Jones in
+appreciation of the artistic possibilities of the subject. His picture
+on its appearance at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1884 set the seal on his
+reputation, and put an end to whatever doubts remained then in the
+public mind as to his right to serious consideration. It is in many ways
+the finest of all his works, the most ambitious and the most exacting in
+the technical problems presented, and it is certainly the most notable
+in accomplishment.]
+
+This point needs to be elaborated for the sake of clearing up any
+misapprehensions which might arise from his more or less erratic way of
+exhibiting his work. As an example, when he exhibited for the first time
+in 1864 in the gallery of the Royal Society of Painters in Water
+Colours, he showed the "Fair Rosamond," painted in 1862, with the
+"Annunciation" and "The Merciful Knight," both of which belong to 1863;
+but in 1865 he sent "A Knight and a Lady," finished just before the
+exhibition opened, "Green Summer," painted in 1863, and "The
+Enchantments of Nimue," which was one of the things he produced in 1861
+while he was still frankly and unreservedly an imitator of Rossetti.
+Such an inversion in the order in which his works were set before the
+public might cause some perplexity to students of his art if they did
+not realise what was his custom in this matter.
+
+He exhibited in the gallery of the Royal Water Colour Society in 1869 a
+painting, "The Wine of Circe," which was not only the most important
+work he had produced up to that time but is also to be counted as one of
+the most admirable of all his performances; and he showed there in 1870
+two other notable works, "Love Disguised as Reason" and "Phyllis and
+Demophoon." It was over this last painting that the dispute arose which
+led to his resignation of his membership of the Society; and one of the
+results of this dispute was that for a space of seven years hardly any
+of his pictures were seen in public. Indeed, the only things he
+exhibited during this period were a couple of water-colours, "The Garden
+of the Hesperides" and "Love among the Ruins," which appeared at the
+Dudley Gallery in 1873. Both were important additions to the list of his
+achievements, and the "Love among the Ruins" especially was a painting
+of exquisite beauty and significance. He repeated this subject in oil
+some twenty years later, because the original water-colour had been
+damaged somewhat seriously, and was not, as he considered, capable of
+repair.
+
+The opening of the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877 gave him his first great
+opportunity of setting before the mass of art lovers his claims to
+special attention. Hitherto he had counted in the minds of a few men of
+taste and sound judgment as an artist of remarkable gifts who promised
+before long to take high rank in his profession, but by the larger
+public interested in art matters he was practically undiscovered. That
+he would have won his way step by step to the position he deserved
+cannot be doubted; if there had been no break in his activity as an
+exhibiting painter his successive contributions to the Royal Water
+Colour Gallery could not have failed to make him widely known. But his
+reappearance at the Grosvenor Gallery was so dramatic, and so convincing
+in its proof of the amazing development of his powers, that he leaped
+at one bound into the place among the greatest of his artistic
+contemporaries, which he was able to hold for the rest of his life
+without the possibility of dispute.
+
+For he had not been idle during this seven years of abstention from
+exhibitions; the period had been rather one of strenuous activity and
+unceasing production. It saw the completion of several important
+canvases on which he had laboured long and earnestly, and it saw the
+commencement of many others which were in later years to be added to the
+list of his more memorable achievements. In some ways, indeed, it was a
+fortunate break; it saved him from the need to strive year by year to
+get pictures finished for specific exhibitions, and it allowed him time
+for calm reflection about the schemes he desired to work out. It freed
+him, too, from the temptation--one to which all artists are exposed--to
+modify the character of his art so that his pictures might be
+sufficiently effective in the incongruous atmosphere of the ordinary
+public gallery. He was able to form his style and develop his
+individuality in the manner he thought best; and then at last to come
+before the public fully matured and with his æsthetic purpose absolutely
+defined.
+
+When the first fruits of this long spell of assiduous effort were seen
+at the Grosvenor Gallery, Burne-Jones became instantly a power in the
+art world. The judgment of the few connoisseurs who had hailed "The
+Wine of Circe" and "Love among the Ruins" as works of the utmost
+significance, and as revelations of real genius, received wide
+endorsement; and though some people who were out of sympathy with the
+spirit of his art were quite ready to attack what they did not
+understand, their voices were scarcely heard amid the general chorus of
+approval. Indeed, for such pictures as "The Days of Creation," "The
+Mirror of Venus," and "The Beguiling of Merlin," exhibited in 1877;
+"Laus Veneris," "Chant d'Amour," and "Pan and Psyche," which with some
+others were shown in 1878; the series of four subjects from the story of
+"Pygmalion and the Image," and the magnificent "Annunciation," in 1879;
+and that exquisite composition, "The Golden Stairs," which was his sole
+contribution to the Grosvenor Gallery in 1880, nothing but enthusiastic
+approval was to be expected from all sincere art lovers; to carp at work
+so noble in conception and so personal in manner implied an entire want
+of artistic discretion.
+
+There were two exhibitions at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1881. In the
+summer one Burne-Jones was not represented, but the winter show included
+a number of his studies and decorative drawings, among them the large
+circular panel, "Dies Domini," a water-colour of rare beauty which can
+be reckoned as one of the most admirable of his designs. In 1882,
+however, he showed "The Mill," "The Tree of Forgiveness," "The Feast of
+Peleus," and several smaller paintings; and in 1883 that splendid piece
+of symbolism, "The Wheel of Fortune," and "The Hours." The following
+year is memorable for the appearance of the important canvas, "King
+Cophetua and the Beggar Maid," and the less ambitious but even more
+fascinating "Wood Nymph," in both of which the artist touched quite his
+highest level of achievement, and gave the most ample proof of the
+maturity of his powers.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VII.--DANAE (The Tower of Brass)
+
+(Glasgow Corporation Art Gallery)
+
+Like the "Sibylla Delphica" this canvas shows how Burne-Jones was
+accustomed to treat subjects from the classic myths in the mediæval
+spirit to which he inclined by habit and association. In his
+illustration of a subject from the story of Danae, where she stands
+watching in wonder the building of the tower of brass which was to be
+her prison, he has looked at Greek tradition in a way that was partly
+his own and partly a reflection of William Morris; but the result is
+none the less persuasive because it does not conform to the Greek
+convention.]
+
+His election as an Associate of the Royal Academy came in 1885. That he
+coveted this particular distinction can scarcely be said; indeed, he was
+at first unwilling to accept it, and it was only in response to a
+personal request from Leighton that he finally decided to take his place
+in the ranks of the Associates. But he exhibited a picture at Burlington
+House in 1886, "The Depths of the Sea," and then, feeling that his work
+was unsuited for the Academy galleries, he sent nothing else there, and
+in 1893 resigned his Associateship. His contributions to the Grosvenor
+Gallery in 1886 were "The Morning of the Resurrection," "Sibylla
+Delphica," and "Flamma Vestalis"; and in 1887 "The Baleful Head," "The
+Garden of Pan," and some other canvases.
+
+After this year he ceased to exhibit at the Grosvenor Gallery, as he was
+one of the chief members of the group of artists who supported Mr.
+Comyns Carr and Mr. C. E. Hallé in the founding of the New Gallery, and
+he sent there nearly all the works he produced during the rest of his
+life. The most important exceptions were the magnificent "Briar Rose"
+series of pictures, which were shown in 1890 by Messrs. Agnew at their
+gallery in Bond Street, and "The Bath of Venus," which went straight
+from the artist's studio to the Glasgow Institute in 1888.
+
+The first exhibition at the New Gallery was opened in 1888, and it
+included several of his oil-paintings, among them "The Tower of Brass,"
+an enlarged repetition of an earlier picture, and two canvases, "The
+Rock of Doom" and "The Doom Fulfilled," from the "Story of Perseus"
+series, to which also belonged "The Baleful Head," shown in the previous
+year. To the succeeding shows there he sent much besides that can be
+taken as representing his soundest convictions. There were the large
+water-colour, "The Star of Bethlehem," and the "Sponsa di Libano," in
+1891; "The Pilgrim at the Gate of Idleness" and "The Heart of the Rose"
+in 1893; "Vespertina Quies" and the oil version of "Love among the
+Ruins" in 1894; "The Wedding of Psyche" in 1895; "Aurora" and "The Dream
+of Launcelot at the Chapel of the San Graal" in 1896; "The Pilgrim of
+Love" in 1897; and "The Prioress' Tale" and "St. George" in 1898. In all
+of these his consistent pursuit of definite ideals, his love of poetic
+fantasy, and his admirable perception of the decorative possibilities of
+the subjects he selected are as evident as in any of his earlier works;
+as years went on he relaxed neither his steadfastness of purpose nor his
+sincerity of method. To the last he remained unspoiled by success and
+unaffected by the popularity which came to him in such ample measure--it
+may be safely said that with his temperament and his artistic creed he
+would have continued on the course he had marked out for himself even if
+the effect of his persistence had been to rouse the bitterest opposition
+of the public, and he was as little inclined to trade on his success as
+he would have been to tout for attention if his efforts had been
+ignored.
+
+There was no waning of his powers as his career drew towards its close.
+It was not his fate to be compelled by failing vitality to be content
+with achievements that lacked the force and freshness by which the work
+of his vigorous maturity was distinguished, for he died before advancing
+years had begun in any way to dull his faculties. Only a few weeks after
+the opening of the 1898 exhibition at the New Gallery he was seized with
+a sudden illness, which had a fatal termination on the morning of June
+17. Really robust health he had never enjoyed, and on several occasions
+serious breakdowns had hampered his activity; but his devotion to his
+art was so sincere, and his determination so strong, that these
+interruptions did not perceptibly affect the continuity of his work.
+Towards the end of his life, however, he suffered from an affection of
+the heart, and the demands which he made upon his strength helped, no
+doubt, to exhaust his vitality. At the time of his death he was striving
+to complete one of the most important and ambitious pictures he ever
+planned--"Arthur in Avalon," a vast canvas which, even in its unfinished
+condition, must be reckoned as an amazing performance, and worthy of a
+distinguished place in the record of modern art.
+
+One of the most interesting things in the life-story of Edward
+Burne-Jones is the manner of his advance, within some twenty years only,
+from a position of obscurity to one of exceptional authority in the
+British school. The young student, who in 1855 had just discovered his
+vocation and was beginning to feel his way under the guidance of
+Rossetti, had become in 1877 one of the most discussed of British
+artists, and had with dramatic suddenness entered into the company of
+the greatest of the nineteenth-century painters. With no effort on his
+part to attract attention, without having recourse to any of those
+devices by which in the ordinary way popularity is won, he secured,
+practically at the first time of asking, all that other men have had to
+strive for laboriously through a long period of probation. Although the
+few things he exhibited while he was a member of the Royal Water Colour
+Society were sufficient to rouse in the few real judges a deep
+interest in his future achievement, it was the singular merit of his
+contributions to the first exhibition at Grosvenor Gallery that made
+him instantly famous. The wider public realised then, and realised most
+forcibly, that he was an artist to be reckoned with, and that his work,
+whether people liked it or not, could by no means be ignored.
+
+[Illustration: PLATE VIII.--THE ENCHANTMENTS OF NIMUE
+
+(South Kensington Museum)
+
+Painted, like the "Sidonia von Bork," while Burne-Jones was still under
+the influence of Rossetti, "The Enchantments of Nimue" is interesting as
+an example of his earliest methods. It was finished in 1861, but it was
+not exhibited until 1865, when it was hung in the Gallery of the Royal
+Society of Painters in Water Colours; it was bought for the South
+Kensington Museum in 1896. The painting shows how Nimue "caused Merlin
+to pass under a heaving-stone into a grave" by the power of her
+enchantments.]
+
+From that time onwards there was for him no looking back. The twenty
+years of preparation, which were spent mainly in ceaseless seeking after
+completer knowledge and in careful study of the practical details of his
+profession, were followed by another twenty years of strenuous
+production, in which he worked out more and more effectively the ideas
+formed in his extraordinarily active mind. In the series of his
+paintings there is a very perceptible advance year by year in technical
+facility, but to suggest that they show also a growth of imaginative
+power would scarcely be correct, because there seems to have been no
+moment in his career when he did not possess in fullest measure the
+faculty of poetic invention and the capacity to put his mental images
+into an exquisite and persuasive shape. What he acquired as a result of
+his exhaustive study was a closer agreement between mind and hand, the
+skill to convey to others what he himself felt. But he had no need to
+labour to make his intelligence more keen or his fancies more varied;
+nature had endowed him with a temperament perfectly adapted for every
+demand which he could make upon it in the pursuit of his art.
+
+That he did not at first secure the unanimous approval of art lovers is
+scarcely surprising. The markedly individual artist who cares nothing
+for popular favour and is more anxious to satisfy his own conscience
+than to gather round him possible clients is never likely to become a
+favourite offhand. Burne-Jones by the brilliancy of his ability silenced
+all opposition long before his death, and gained over the bulk of the
+doubters who questioned his right to the admiration he received when he
+first began to exhibit at the Grosvenor Gallery. But for some while the
+unusual character of his art caused it to be much misunderstood by
+people who had not taken the trouble to analyse his intentions. He was
+accused of affectation, of deliberate imitation of the early Italians;
+he was attacked for his indifference to realism and for his decorative
+preferences. Even the genuineness of his poetic feeling was suspected,
+and his love of symbolism was ridiculed as the aberration of a warped
+mind. Much of this misconception was cleared away by the collected
+exhibition of his works which was held at the New Gallery in the winter
+of 1892-1893, for this show, by bringing together the best of his
+productions and by summing up all phases of his practice, proved
+emphatically that he had been as sincere and logical in his aims as he
+had been consistent in his expression. It was no longer possible to
+attack him out of mere prejudice; the verdict given fifteen years before
+on his art by those who understood him best was seen to be just. When a
+second collection was shown at the New Gallery--a memorial exhibition
+arranged in 1898, a few months after his death--few people remained who
+were prepared to dispute his mastery.
+
+It is fortunate that justice should have been done to him by his
+contemporaries and that there should have been really so little delay in
+the wider acknowledgment of his claims. If appreciation had been
+withheld from him while he lived, if it had been his fate to secure only
+a posthumous reputation, there would have been some diminution of his
+influence, and his art would have lost some of its authority. But as a
+right estimate of his position was arrived at during his lifetime, when
+he was at the height of his activity as an exponent of an exceptionally
+intelligent æsthetic creed, he was able to make his beliefs effective in
+bringing about the conversion of a large section of the public to a
+truer understanding of the value of decorative qualities in pictorial
+art. He proved emphatically that decoration does not imply, as is
+popularly supposed, the abandonment of the characteristics which make a
+picture interesting; he showed that a subject can be legitimately
+treated so that it engages fully the sympathies of the average man, and
+yet can be kept from any descent into obviousness or commonplace
+conventionality. The painted story in his hands was no trivial anecdote;
+it was a motive by means of which he conveyed not only moral lessons but
+artistic truths as well, something didactically valuable but at the same
+time capable of appealing to the senses with exquisite daintiness and
+charm.
+
+Indeed, he can best be summed up as a teacher who clothed the lessons of
+life with noble beauty and with dignity that was commanding without
+being forbidding. There was human sympathy in everything he painted--a
+tender, gentle sentiment which escaped entirely the taint of
+sentimentality and which, tinged as it always was with a kind of quiet
+sadness, never became morbid or unwholesome. He was too truly a poet to
+dwell upon the ugly side of existence, just as he was too sincerely a
+decorator to insist unnecessarily upon common realities. That he
+searched deeply into facts is made clear by the mass of preparatory work
+he produced to guide him in his paintings, by the enormous array of
+drawings and studies which he executed to satisfy the demand he made
+upon himself for exactness and accuracy in the building up of his
+designs. But in his studies, as in his pictures, the intention to
+express a personal feeling is never absent. He selected, modified,
+re-arranged as his temperament suggested; he omitted unimportant things
+and amplified those which were of dominant interest; he sought for what
+was helpful to his artistic purpose and passed by what would have seemed
+in wrong relation, consistently keeping in view the lesson which he
+desired to teach. It can be frankly admitted that a certain mannerism
+resulted from his way of working, but this mannerism was by no means the
+dull formality into which many artists descend when they substitute a
+convention for inspiration; it was rather a revelation of his
+personality and of that belief in the rightness of his own judgment
+which counts for so much in the development of the really strong man.
+Except for the short time in which he was influenced by Rossetti, his
+life was spent in illustrating an entirely independent view of artistic
+responsibilities; and it would be difficult now to question this
+independence with the wonderful series of his paintings available to
+prove how earnestly and how seriously he strove to realise his ideals in
+art.
+
+
+    The plates are printed by BEMROSE & SONS, LTD., Derby and London
+    The text at the BALLANTYNE PRESS, Edinburgh
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41583 ***