Summary

This book studies some of Edward Burne-Jones’s paintings, focusing specifically on his approach to nature, both through his observations about the physical world, and through his symbolic interpretations of earthly and celestial realms. Burne-Jones’s appreciation for natural formations grew from his interests in astronomy and geography and was expanded by his aesthetic sensibility for physical and metaphysical beauty. His drawings and watercolors carefully recorded the physical world he saw around him. These studies provided the background for a collection of paintings depicting landscapes with flora and fauna, which in turn ignited an artistic furor that inspired the imagery he used in his allegorical, fantasy, and dream cycles about forests, winding paths, and sweet briar roses.

In this book, my quest is to elucidate some of his concepts of nature, as well as his personal view of the physical and metaphysical phenomena visualized in some of his drawings, watercolors, and paintings. The volume consists of four chapters:

Chapter One: Artificial and Natural Landscapes: Flora and Fauna

Chapter Two: Celestial and Planetary Realms

Chapter Three: Nature and Time

Chapter Four: Fantasy Cycle: The Enchantment of the The Forest

The content of each relates to different conceptions of nature. For example, a traditional observation in plein air is that of a landscape replicated in a drawing or a watercolor. This design is later transferred or copied with accuracy into the background of a painting. The landscape may be accurately replicated but with an interpretative twist, transforming it into an imaginary conception of nature for a forest in a fairy tale cycle.

Background of the Book

In his wife’s Memorials and the Germ, a contemporary journal of the time, Burne-Jones postulates many of his aesthetic ideals, his theory of art, and in particular his concepts of beauty, astronomy, and nature. In part, Burne-Jones's theory of art reveals the artistic aims of Mannerism and Pre-Raphaelitism. As noted in my previous book, Burne-Jones’s Mythical Paintings, his aesthetic theory emerged from his educational and visual training in the classics at Exeter College, Oxford, his artistic studies with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, his literary pursuits with his mentor William Morris, and his European traveling experiences, particularly his several visits to Italy. In this later sojourn, he visited many cities, including Genoa, Padua, Verona, Venice, Perugia, Ravenna, Rome, Siena, Pisa, and Florence. Here, Burne-Jones became familiar with the art of Giotto, Mantegna, Crivelli, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Raphael, Michelangelo, and especially of Botticelli. His constant visits to the British Museum and National Gallery in London made him intimately aware of these Italian masters.

Burne-Jones’s earlier fascination with ancient astronomical manuscripts and Renaissance books of illuminations he consulted in British and Italian libraries made him aware of celestial patterns projected in the past and contemporary British accomplishments in discovering the mysteries of the universe. The courtly illuminated manuscripts provided him, not only with an interest in Medieval and Renaissance courtly love, but also with a visual knowledge of herbal decorations and myths about various flowers and plants. These pursuits guided him to consult further emblematic and mythographic books such as Francesco Colonna's Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (The Dream of Poliphilo, 1499) of which he owned a copy gifted by Morris, as well as Guilaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung’s Romance de la rose (136-76), Cristoforo de Predis’ De Sphaera (1470), Otto Vaenius’s Amorum emblemata (1615-20), and Geoffrey Chaucer’s Romount of the Rose (1387). The Brititsh writings about art and art criticism by Walter Pater and John Ruskin further sharpened Burne-Jones’s knowledge about artistic creativity and his observations of the natural world. The poetry of his fellow Pre-Raphaelite artists (William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti), as well as other British and poets (Christina Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, and Afred Tennyson), augmented this cultural vision with the beauty of natural and celestial forms.

Focus in Each Chapter

Chapter One, “Natural and Artificial Landscapes: Flora and Fauna”, comments on how Burne-Jones, like his fellow Pre-Raphaelite painters, were fascinated with nature, natural history, and landscape gardening, which is to say the aesthetic appreciation for natural flora arranged as as to appear unstructured or wild. As a member and promoter of the Arts and Craft Movement, Burne-Jones considered the garden style a rejection of industrial England, an attempt to preserve and even restore the landscape to pre-industrial times. This included Persian gardens, as well as the formality of Italian, French, and Dutch landscapes. The English Landscape Movement developed out the studies of natural history made by Sir Francis Bacon and Robert Cecil. They famously suggested inserting botanical discoveries from the New World in garden designs. In the ninetheenth century, the movement grew to include shrubs and blooming perennials, which would sweep in a painterly fashion from winding gravel pathways to rolling hills and water, and were ideally planned against a backdrop of forest with groupings of trees in the background.

One instance where Burne-Jones’s quest for botanical accuracy is visualized is in Green Summer (1864). There are two versions: a watercolor from 1864, and an oil painting, both of which remain in private collections in England. Another painting showing Burne-Jones’s love of nature is Love among the Ruins (1870), of which Burne-Jones similarly makes both a watercolor in 1870 and an oil painting in 1894. In 1870, this particular watercolor was employed for the illustration of The Rubáiyåt of Omar Rhayyám, an illuminated manuscript in watercolors, bodycolor, and gold leaf. The calligraphy and ornamentation were designed by William Morris, and the image was composed by Edward Burne-Jones. Love and the Pilgrim (1890) and Beguiling of Merlin (1874) are paintings where Burne-Jones depicted nature by combining natural (or physical) representation of recent scientific discoveries with metaphysical associations of philosophical and poetic conceits about love. For example, the protagonist in L’amant (1865) and Love Among the Ruins (1873) was the beautiful Greek sculptress, as well as his friend, model, and lover Maria Cassavetti Zambaco (1843–1914).

For Burne-Jones, briar roses became a complex symbol with idiosyncratic meanings. The rose is symbol of balance and love, and the beautiful color of the flower contrasts with its unique scent, which is a poetic allusion to spring as well as love. However, the thorny branches of a rose form an ancient symbol for pain and pleasure. Burne-Jones played with this motif in his paintings to capture the perplexity of love as experienced in his own life for his muse Maria. He was also challenging the artistic superiority of painting over photography, which at the time was rapidly becoming a new technique in his artistic cycle.

Chapter Two, “Celestial and Planetary Realms”, deals with his scientific interests in astronomy as noted in his memorials and accounts. In 1879 he made cartoon drawings of the cycle of the nine planets for the artisans of the Morris Firm, which transformed his designs into stained-glass panels. The commission was for the decoration of Woodlands, the Victorian mansion of Baron Angus Holden (1833–1912), a major of Bradford. Presently, seven of the cartoons – The Moon (Luna), Earth (Terra), Sol (Apollo), Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and Evening Star – are in the Torre Abbey Museum in Torquay, while the cartoon for Mars is part of the collection of drawings at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, and the cartoon for Morning Star is located at Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford, all of which are in the UK. Special focus is given to the Moon (Luna), as an planetary formation, since Burne-Jones had specific cultural, literary, and scientific references associated with this astronomical body. In the creation of the Planets cycle, Burne-Jones was inspired by cultural events of the time such as British astronomical discoveries and British and Italian humanistic sources in literature and the visual arts portraying astronomy. This chapter historically and iconographically examines the nine planets as celestial and terrestrial formations as well as astral spheres as good omens. It is composed of three sections. The first section discusses the history of the artistic commission, the second analyzes the stylistic and iconographical aspects of the Planets cycle, and the third explains some of Burne-Jones’s cultural sources for the Planets cycle as manifestations of seasonal transformations, heavenly and terrestrial realms, musical spheres, and visions of a benevolent cosmos. This final section discusses the history of the artistic commission and explains some of Burne-Jones’s cultural sources for the cycle and Luna specifically.

Chapter Three, “Nature and Time”, addresses Burne-Jones’s depictions of celestial and terrestrial images as natural timekeepers in the Mirror of Venus and The Hours. In ancient times, the most practical method of keeping time for agricultural practices, navigation, and the labor of the days was for human beings to observe the solar, lunar, and celestial movements, which in turn would impact Earth. Hence, the formation of a type of calendar that impacted the seasons on Earth, recalling the mythological legend of the Demeter (Ceres), the Greek Goddess of Harvest, Fertility, and Agriculture. Natural time, therefore, acted as a natural clock with the formation and changes of the seasons, with changes in sunlight and rainfall and the growth of seasonal vegetation. The growth of buds, plants, and trees, and the changing of colors and shapes of leaves also provided a cycle that was repeated annually or at least periodically.

The irreversible process, the constant condition, and cyclical movements of celestial spheres (sun, moon, and stars), construct a natural time. The sun and sunlight, therefore, created patterns of natural time: raising in the east, in the morning, continuing its escalation through the day to finally set in the west in the evening, forming a cyclical pattern as seen in Burne-Jones’s The Hours and the Mirror of Venus.

The Moon’s luminosity provides guidance to the human navigator on the water. The moon cycle begins with a new moon indicating the first day of the lunar month. As the lunar illumination increases, it forms a full moon and is waxing. The cycle continues to form a quarter moon. Like the sun and the moon, the stars form cyclical patterns that account for the natural manifestation of time. Burne-Jones captured this lunar effect in many of his paintings, such as those entitled, Luna, Night, and Evening Star. The cyclical movement of the moon around the Earth produced not only the periodical phases of the moon but also the gravitation pulls that dictated tides. Since ancient times, the use of hourglass, sundials, and watercocks guided people to keep abreast of natural time. Burne-Jones similarly employed these ancient measuring devices in his paintings, such as The Hours and The Sleeping Beauty cycle.

The first part of this chapter considers the transformation of physical time into mythological time as exemplified by The Mirror of Venus that Burne-Jones painted between 1865 and 1867, creating a planetary landscape on Earth. He painted two versions: a small version in gouache and oil and a larger version in oil on canvas. In composing this subject, Burne-Jones was inspired by the poetic and chromatic description of a lyrical stanza on “The Hill of Venus” in the long epic poem Earthly Paradise, written by his close friend and collaborator William Morris. This part is comprised three sections: Burne-Jones’s history of the paintings, his iconographical sources, and an iconological interpretation of The Mirror of Venus.

The second part of this chapter focuses on a terrestrial landscape encapsulating a diurnal and seasonal time. In a letter to the poet Eleanor Lady Leighton Warren (1841-1914), Burne-Jones commented on his accomplishment in completing The Hours:

I have been working very hard in spite of all things, and I hope to finish the ‘Wheel of Fortune’ and the ‘Hours’. I think you never saw the last–not a big picture, about five feet long–a row of six little women that typify the hours of day from waking to sleep. Their little knees look so funny in a row that wit descended on me from above, and I called them the ‘laps of time’. Every little lady besides the proper colour of her own frock wears a lining of colour of the hour before her and a sleeve of the hour coming after–so that Mr. Whistler could, if he liked, call it a fugue. (Georgiana Burne-Jones’s Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, 2 vols [London: Macmillan, 1904, vol. II, p 127].)

Throughout early 1865 and 1870, Burne-Jones was thinking about the depiction of The Hours as indicated by his numerous drawings. Then, twelve years later in 1882, he completed the painting, which was a masterpiece of coloration and light. Burne-Jones’s The Hours, which is now displayed at the Grave Art Gallery in Sheffield, shows the passing of time from morning till evening through female personifications of Waking, Dressing, Working, Feasting, Playing, and Sleeping. Burne-Jones composed numerous drawings for The Hours. Most of them are at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in England, some are at the Tate Gallery in London, and others are in the Ponce Museum in Puerto Rico.

This section also analyses the iconography and the meaning of the painting in relation to classical and Italian Renaissance imagery, as well as to the physical and metaphysical conceptions of time as a seasonal transformer and a spiritual trajectory of the mind-soul.

Chapter Four, “Fantasy Cycle: The Enchantment of the Forest”, reveals Burne-Jones’s interpretation of nature via fantasy. In the Sleeping Beauty cycles, Burne-Jones and William Morris were inspired by fairy tales from the sixteenth-century Neapolitan Giambattista Basile’s Sun, Moon, and Talia, Charles Perrault’s seventeenth-century French La Belle au Bois Dormant, the early nineteenth-century German version of the tale by the Brothers Grimm, and in England, in particular, by Alfred Tennyson’s poem ‘The Day-Dream’.

This section consists of three parts. The first explains the literary sources for Burne-Jones’s illustrations for his cycle on the children’s fairy tale Sleeping Beauty. The second deals with a brief historiography and iconography of the theme, and the third analyzes the program of Burne-Jones’s painted cycles on the Legend of the Briar Rose with an iconological interpretation of dormancy.

Edward Burne-Jones conceived of two different painted cycles for the Sleeping Beauty between 1859 and 1894. The first relates specifically to the children’s fairytale of Sleeping Beauty, while the second is a personal interpretation of the tale, which he entitled The Legend of the Briar Rose or The Briar Rose. In these cycles Burne-Jones depicted a mythical hortus conclusus (“enclosed garden”) decorated with perfumed roses and wild bushes, where beautiful figures are either dreaming or sleeping. In visualizing this artistic suspension, Burne-Jones created what the poet Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-78) referred to as a “pregnant moment” in his description of the marble statue of Laocoön and his Sons. This aesthetic pause is a suspended moment in space and time, where the artist achieves the most poignant outcome in form and meaning for the viewer to grasp: the essence of the artwork. Nothing needs to be added or deleted in the imagery for the viewer to capture its beauty and meaning. His imagery of suspension, as expressed through fantasy, reveals Burne-Jones’s reflections on art, poetry, beauty, and love, as well as his aesthetic culture, which can be summarized as “art for art’s sake,” as he proclaimed in a letter:

I mean by a picture a beautiful, romantic dream of something that never was, never will be—in a light better than any light that ever shone—in a land no one can define or remember, only desire—and the forms divinely beautiful—and then I wake up.

Burne-Jones’s coloristic palette, languid lines, and spatial illusions unite the narrative scenes that make up these cycles whilst creating an imagery of suspension for the viewer. Within this unusual aesthetic moment, he expressed his reflections on art, beauty, and love through fantasy.

Methodology

The approach to art is iconographic and iconological, that is to say a careful study of meanings and symbolism in the paintings created by Edward Burne-Jones. Hence, this book is primarily a thematic study on the representation of the natural world as well as the planetary cycles. Burne-Jones, like many Pre-Raphaelite painters, was fascinated with nature, natural history, and landscape gardening, which is why his aesthetic appreciation for natural flora arranged to appear unstructured or wild. This study does not intend to be a catalogue raisonné of Burne-Jones’s oeuvre. It does not address issues of connoisseurship, dating, disputations among scholars regarding attributions, and certainly does not cover all scholarship associated with Burne-Jones. The book is merely a short interpretative iconographical and iconological study on an aspect of Burne-Jones’s inventiveness and manifestations on viewing nature.  

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