Part 1
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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
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"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_.
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BURNE-JONES
by
A. LYS BALDRY
Illustrated with Eight Reproductions in Colour
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
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.
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.
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.
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.