Edward Burne-Jones: Victorian Artist-Dreamer

Wildman, Stephen, and John Christian, with essays by Alan Crawford, and Laurence des Cars (1998)

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"In the palace of art there are many chambers, and that of which Mr. Burne-Jones holds the key is a wondrous museum. His imagination, his fertility of invention, his exquisiteness of work, his remarkable gifts as a colourist—all these things constitute a brilliant distinction." With these words the American critic and novelist Henry James, in 1877, sang the praises of Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898), the British painter and designer whose work was creating a sensation at the recently opened Grosvenor Gallery in London.

A pupil of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and a protégé of John Ruskin, Burne-Jones belonged to the second generation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, creating a narrative style of romantic symbolism steeped in medieval legend and fused with the influence of Italian Renaissance masters that was to have widespread influence on both British and European art. Within the sophisticated culture of the late Victorian period Burne-Jones's star rose rapidly, and by the 1880s he had become the establishment artist par excellence, one of the most admired and sought-after painters in Europe. By the 1890s, however, Burne-Jones was ceding popularity to the growing taste for abstraction, and until recently he was all but ignored. Today, one hundred years after his death, in what John Christian, the leading authority on the artist, in this volume terms a "critical somersault," Burne-Jones is once again considered the greatest British painter of the nineteenth century—after only Turner and perhaps Constable.

Edward Burne-Jones, Victorian Artist-Dreamer is the catalogue for the first exhibition in the United States devoted to this painter. The works in the exhibition, organized under the auspices of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, England, and the Réunion des musées nationaux, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, were selected by Stephen Wildman, Curator of the Ruskin Library at Lancaster University, England.

A prodigiously productive artist, Burne-Jones, in addition to being a successful and innovative painter, was also an important force in the Arts and Crafts movement, working closely with his lifelong friend William Morris in the production of such decorative arts as ceramic tiles, stained glass, large-scale tapestries, and illustrated books to be printed at Morris's renowned Kelmscott Press. Examples of works in all these media are presented in the exhibition, with full-color and black-and-white reproductions of each of the 173 works included in the catalogue. Arranged chronologically, the volume is divided into eight sections, each introduced by a vibrant and broadly informative text by John Christian, followed by catalogue entries written by Mr. Wildman and Mr. Christian. An essay by the British scholar Alan Crawford explores Burne-Jones's contribution as a decorative artist, and an essay by Laurence des Cars, Curator at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, deals with the artist's reputation and influence in France and Belgium.

Table of contents

Director's Foreword
Acknowledgments
List of Lenders
Note to the Reader

A Critical Somersault
John Christian

Burne-Jones as a Decorative Artist
Alan Crawford

Burne-Jones and France
Laurence des Cars

Catalogue
Stephen Wildman and John Christian

Birmingham and Oxford

Pre-Raphaelite Apprenticeship

Ruskin and Italy

A New Voice

The "Seven Blissfullest Years"

Fame at Home and Abroad

The Artist Craftsman

"Pictured Abstractions"

Chronology
Bibliography
Index
Photograph Credits

About the authors

Stephen Wildman is the Curator of the Ruskin Library, Lancaster University, England, and a noted authority on the art of the Pre-Raphaelites. His most recent publication is Visions of Love and Life: Pre-Raphaelite Art from the Birmingham Collection (1995).

John Christian, the leading scholar on Burne-Jones, is the author of numerous essays and articles devoted to the artist's work. He is also a consultant at Christie's, London.

Alan Crawford specializes in the history of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British architecture and decorative arts. The author of C. R. Ashbee: Architect, Designer and Romantic Socialist (1985) and a contributing author to Charles Rennie MacKintosh (1996), he is currently working on a history of the Arts and Crafts movement.

Laurence des Cars is Curator at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

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