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 B U R N E •JONES 479 five-and-twenty what he ought to have been at fifteen.” von Bork,” painted in 1860. These little masterpieces He had had no regular training as a draughtsman, and have a directness of execution rare with the artist. In lacked the confidence of science. But his extraordinary powerful characterization, combined with a decorative faculty of invention as a designer was already ripening; motive, they rival Rossetti at his best. In June of this year his mind, rich in knowledge of classical story and mediaeval Burne-Jones was married to Miss Georgiana Macdonald, romance, teemed with pictorial subjects; and he set and settled in Bloomsbury. Five years later he movtfd himself to complete his equipment by resolute labour, to Kensington Square^ and shortly afterwards to the witnessed by innumerable drawings. The works of this Grange, I ulham, an old house with a garden, where he first period are all more or less tinged by the influence of resided till his death. In 1862 the artist and his wife Rossetti; but they are already differentiated from the elder accompanied Ruskin to Italy, visiting Milan and Venice. master’s style by their more facile though less intensely In 1864 he was elected an associate of the Society of felt elaboration of imaginative detail. Many are pen- Painters in Water-colours, and exhibited, among other and-ink drawings on vellum, exquisitely finished, of which works, “ The Merciful Knight,” the first picture which the “Waxen Image” is one of the earliest and best fully revealed his ripened personality as an artist. The examples; it is dated 1856. Although subject, medium, next six years saw a series of fine water-colours at the same gallery; but in 1870, owing to a misunderstanding, Burne-Jones resigned his membership of the society. He was re-elected in 1886. During the next seven years, 18 <0-7 t, only two works of the painter’s were exhibited: These were two water-colours, shown at the Dudley Gallery in 1873, one of them being the beautiful “Love among the Ruins, ’ destroyed twenty years later by a cleaner who supposed it to be an oil painting, but afterwards reproduced in oils by the painter (see Plate). This silent period was however, one of unremitting production. Hitherto BurneJones had worked almost entirely in water-colours. He now began a number of large pictures in oils, working at them in turn, and having always several on hand. The “Briar Rose” series, “Laus Veneris,” the “Golden Stairs,” the “Pygmalion” series, and “The Mirror of Venus’’(see Plate), are among the works planned and completed, or carried far towards completion, during these years. At last, in May 1877, the day of recognition came, with the opening of the first exhibition of the Grosvenor Gallery, when the “ Days of Creation,” the “ Beguiling of Merlin,” and the “ Mirror of Venus ” were all shown. Burne-Jones followed up the signal success of these pictures with “Laus Veneris,” the “Chant d’Amour,” “Pan and Psyche,” and other works, exhibited in 1878. Most of these pictures are painted in gay and brilliant colours. A change is noticeable next year, 1879, in the “Annunciation ” and in the four pictures called “ Pygmalion and the Image ”; the former of these, one of the simplest and most perfect of the artist’s works, is subdued and sober; Sir Edward Burne-Jones. in the latter a scheme of soft and delicate tints was (From a photograph by Elliott and Fry, London.) attempted, not with entire success. A similar temperance and manner derive from Rossetti’s inspiration, it is not of colour marks the “ Golden Stairs,” first exhibited in the hand of a pupil merely, but of a potential master. 1880. In 1884, following the almost sombre “Wheel of This was recognized by Rossetti himself, who before long Fortune” of the preceding year, appeared “King Cophetua avowed that he had nothing more to teach him. Burne- and the Beggar Maid,” in which Burne-Jones once more Jones’s first sketch in oils dates from this same year, indulged his love of gorgeous colour, refined by the period 1856 ; and during 1857 he made for Bradfield College the of self-restraint. This masterpiece is now in the National first of what was to be an immense series of cartoons for collection. He next turned to two important sets of stained glass. In 1858 he decorated a cabinet with the pictures, “ The Briar Rose ” and “ The Story of Perseus,” “ Prioress’s Tale ” from Chaucer, his first direct illustration though these were not completed for some years to come. of the work of a poet whom he especially loved and who In 1886, having been elected A.R.A. the previous year, inspired him with endless subjects. Thus early, therefore, he exhibited for the only time at the Royal Academy we see the artist busy in all the various fields in which he “ The Depths of the Sea,” a mermaid carrying down with was to labour. her a youth whom she has unconsciously drowned in the In the autumn of 1857 Burne-Jones joined in Rossetti’s impetuosity of her love. This picture adds to the habitual ill-fated scheme to decorate the walls of the Oxford haunting charm a tragic irony of conception, and a felicity Union. Hone of the painters had mastered the technique of execution which give it a place apart among Burneof fresco, and their pictures had begun to peel from the Jones’s works. He resigned his Associateship in 1893. walls before they were completed. In 1859 Burne-Jones One of the “Perseus” series was exhibited in 1887, made his first journey to Italy. He visited Florence, two more in 1888, with “ The Brazen Tower,” inspired by Pisa, Siena, and other places, and appears to have found the same legend. In 1890 the four pictures of “The the gentle and romantic Sienese more attractive than any Briar Rose ” were exhibited by themselves, and won the other school. Rossetti’s influence still persisted ; and its widest admiration. The huge tempera picture, “ The impress is visible, more strongly perhaps than ever before, Star of Bethlehem,” painted for the corporation of Birin the two water-colours “Sidonia von Bork” and “Clara mingham, was exhibited in 1891. A long illness for