Adam and Eve (Labour: Whan Adam Delved and Eve Span, Who Was Then the Gentleman?)

1895 or later

Not on view

Burne-Jones designed this composition to serve as a woodcut frontispiece for A Dream of John Ball (1888)—a socialist novel set during the English Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, written by his friend William Morris. In that context, the image of earth’s first family appears with a medieval couplet: "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?" The image was reconstituted as Labour for the Daily Chronicle in 1895, about the time this untitled photo-relief was created. Without text, the elegiac image sheds any obvious political meaning. Burne-Jones did not share Morris’s socialism, and the difference often tested their friendship.

Artwork Details

Overview

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Exhibition History

References

Title: Adam and Eve (Labour: Whan Adam Delved and Eve Span, Who Was Then the Gentleman?)
Artist: After Sir Edward Burne-Jones (British, Birmingham 1833–1898 Fulham)
Artist: Carl Hentschel (British, active 1890s)
Date: 1895 or later
Medium: Process print
Dimensions: Image: 13 1/4 × 11 3/8 in. (33.7 × 28.9 cm)
Sheet: 21 3/8 × 16 3/4 in. (54.3 × 42.5 cm)
Frame: 24 x 18 in. (61 x 45.7 cm)
Classification: Prints
Credit Line: Rogers Fund, 1921
Object Number: 21.14.12
Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints

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