
Sir Edward Burne-Jones Painting Reproductions Gallery 2 of 5
1833-1898English Pre-Raphaelite Painter
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (28 August 1833 - 17 June 1898) was an English artist and designer closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and largely responsible for bringing the Pre-Raphaelites into the mainstream of the British art world, while at the same time executing some of the most exquisite and beautiful artwork of the time.
Burne-Jones was born in Birmingham, the son of a frame-maker at Bennetts Hill, where a blue plaque commemorates his birth. His mother died within six days of his being born, and he was raised by his father and an unsympathetic housekeeper. He attended Birmingham's King Edward VI grammar school, and then studied theology at Exeter College, Oxford. At Oxford he became a friend of William Morris as a consequence of a mutual interest in poetry, and was influenced by John Ruskin. At this time he discovered Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur which was to be so influential in his life.
He studied under Rossetti, but developed his own style influenced by his travels in Italy with Ruskin and others. He had intended to become a church minister, but under Morris's influence decided to become an artist and designer instead. After Oxford, from which he did not take a degree, he became closely involved in the rejuvenation of the tradition of stained glass art in England - his stained glass works include the windows of the Philip Webb-designed St Martin's Church in Brampton, Cumbria.
In 1856 Burne-Jones became engaged to Georgiana MacDonald (1840a€“1920), one of the MacDonald sisters. She was training to be a painter, and was the sister of Burne-Jones's old school friend. The couple married in 1860, after which she made her own work in woodcuts and became a close friend of George Eliot. (Another MacDonald sister married the artist Sir Edward Poynter, a further sister married the ironmaster Alfred Baldwin and was the mother of the Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, and yet another sister was the mother of Rudyard Kipling. Kipling and Baldwin were thus Burne-Jones's nephews).
In 1867 Burne-Jones and his wife settled in Fulham, London. Morris later fell in love with Georgiana, but she rejected him. For much of the 1870s Burne-Jones did not exhibit, following a spate of bitterly hostile attacks in the press, and an affair with his Greek model Maria Zambaco which ended with her trying to commit suicide in public.
In 1877, he was persuaded to show eight oil paintings at the Grosvenor Gallery (a new rival to the Royal Academy). These included The Beguiling of Merlin. The timing was right, and he was taken up as a herald and star of the new Aesthetic Movement.
As well as painting, he also worked in a variety of crafts; including designing ceramic tiles, jewellery, tapestries, book illustration (the Kelmscott Press's Chaucer in 1896), and stage costumes.
In 1880 the Burne-Joneses bought Prospect House in Rottingdean, near Brighton in Sussex, as their holiday home, and soon after the next door Aubrey Cottage to create North End House, reflecting the fact that their Fulham home was in North End Road. (Years later, in 1923, Sir Roderick Jones, head of Reuters, and his wife, playwright and novelist Enid Bagnold, were to add the adjacent Gothic House to the property and which became the inspiration and setting for her play The Chalk Garden).
In 1881 he received an honorary degree from Oxford, and was made an Honorary Fellow in 1883. In 1885 he became the President of the Birmingham Society of Artists. In 1894 he was knighted. Devastated by the death of his friend Morris in 1896, Burne-Jones' health declined substantially until his death on 17 June 1898. Six days later, at the intervention of the Prince of Wales, a memorial service was held at Westminster Abbey. It was the first time an artist had been so honoured. Burne-Jones was buried in Rottingdean churchyard, near Brighton, a place he knew through summer family holidays. Long out-of-fashion in the art world, due to Modernist art and Abstract Expressionism, it was not until the mid 1970s that his work began to be re-assessed and once again acclaimed.
Burne-Jones exerted a considerable influence on British painting, as detailed in the large exhibition in 1989 at the Barbican Art Gallery, London. Burne-Jones was also highly influential among French symbolist painters, from 1889. His work also inspired poetry by Swinburne - Swinburne's 1886 Poems & Ballads is dedicated to Burne-Jones.
His troubled son Philip (1861a€“1926) became a successful portrait painter. His adored daughter Margaret (1866a€“1953) married John William Mackail (1850a€“1945); friend and biographer of Morris, and Professor of Poetry at Oxford from 1911a€“1916.
Burne-Jones' studio assistant, Charles Fairfax Murray, went on to a successful art career as a painter in his own right. He later became an important collector and respected art dealer. Between 1903 and 1907 he sold a great many works by Burne-Jones and the Pre-Raphaelites to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, at far below their market worth. Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery now has the largest collection of works by Burne-Jones in the world, including the massive watercolour Star of Bethlehem, commissioned for the Gallery in 1897. The paintings are believed by some to have influenced the young J.R.R. Tolkien, then growing up in Birmingham.
Burne-Jones was a very strong influence on the Birmingham Group of artists, from the 1890s onwards.
116 Paintings of Burne-Jones
Boston Museum of Fine Arts Massachusetts USA
The Love Song (Le Chant d'Amour)
$777
$47.90
Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University Massachusetts USA
Flamma Vestalis
$526
$75.45
Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University Massachusetts USA
Danae Watching the Building of the Brazen Tower
$471
$47.90
Private Collection
The Last Judgement
$66.90
Private Collection
Angel Musician (Detail)
$53.36
Private Collection
The Morning of the Resurrection
$689
$47.90
Harrogate Museums and Art Gallery North Yorkshire United Kingdom
The Choristers
$603
$47.90
Harrogate Museums and Art Gallery North Yorkshire United Kingdom
The Musicians
$603
$47.90
Private Collection
Astrologia
$508
$60.82
Private Collection
King Solomon Holding the Temple
$60.90
Manchester Art Gallery Manchester United Kingdom
Cupid and Psyche
$669
$55.44
Manchester Art Gallery Manchester United Kingdom
The Sleeping Beauty
$471
$47.90
Galleries and Museums Sheffield United Kingdom
The Hours
$1422
$47.90
Museum and Art Gallery Birmingham United Kingdom
Holy Grail Tapestry
$47.90
Art Galleries and Museums Bradford United Kingdom
Many-Winged Angel
$55.64
Art Galleries and Museums Bradford United Kingdom
Angel Swinging a Censer
$62.91
Private Collection
Repose in Egypt
$50.54
The Makins Collection Washington USA
An Angel Playing a Flageolet
$396
$47.90
The Makins Collection Washington USA
Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt
$43.91
City Art Gallery Southampton United Kingdom
The Call of Perseus
$701
$73.93
Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery Bristol United Kingdom
St. George and the Dragon: The Return
$884
$70.27