Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/404

Burne-Jones the name of Morris, who executed them; at that time he cared nothing for what is commonly called society, and in fact he bade fair to pass unnoticed among a generation which displayed little curiosity about its artists. The dedication to him of Mr. Swinburne’s ‘Poems and Ballads’ in 1867 introduced his name to the literary class: but at this period it may almost be said that there was only one buyer of Burne-Jones’s work, though he was an enthusiastic one. This was William Graham of Grosvenor Place, well known as a collector of early Italian pictures and of the works of the English Pre-Raphaelites and of their artistic descendants. He was the purchaser of several watercolours, of the ‘Chant d’ Amour,’ the ‘Days of Creation,’ the ‘Beguiling of Merlin,’ and of many other pictures by Burne-Jones. After the owner’s death, at the sale in May 1886, the great prices which were realised by these pictures gave the first visible proof that wealthy English people had learnt to admire the great imaginative painter. Mr. Graham and his family were also close personal friends of the artist. Burne-Joues introduced Ruskin to Mr. Graham, and Ruskin and Rossetti were fellow-visitors with Burne-Jones at Mr. Graham’s house. There Burne-Jones often talked of art and literature with rare genius, versatility, humour, and information.

It was at the opening of the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877 that Burne-Jones’s work was practically first introduced to the great world. The three pictures last named were his principal contribution, and they made a prodigious impression. The Philistines disliked them, of course, but by this time the educated public had been sufficiently prepared for a poetical and unconventional art; the literary class was captured; the organs of public opinion were mostly not hostile. Very different indeed was the reception accorded to Burne-Jones from that which had greeted the young Millais and Holman Hunt a quarter of a century before; for in the interval not only had the common views about painting been greatly shaken by the writings of Ruskin, but the poems of William Morris and Rossetti had won acceptance, with a large class of readers, for the sentiments which find expression in Burne-Jones’s pictures. During the years of the existence of the Grosvenor Gallery, 1877–1887 and in the annual exhibitions of its successor, the New Gallery, Burne-Jones’s work formed the centre of attraction. It was at one or other of these rooms that he exhibited, besides the pictures already mentioned, the ‘Mirror of Venus’ (1877), the ‘Pygmalion’ series (1879), the ‘Golden Stairs’ (1880), the ‘Wheel of Fortune’ (1883), ‘King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid’ (1884), ‘The Garden of Pan’ (1887), and a score of other pictures which at once became celebrated, together with a number of very individual portraits, among which that of the painter’s daughter is perhaps the best remembered. A still more striking success was attained by the ‘Briar Rose’ series, when the four large pictures which compose it were exhibited by Messrs. Agnew at their gallery in Bond Street in June 1890. Both here and in various great towns these four splendid illustrations of the old fairy tale of ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ were visited by crowds, and the sentiment, design, and colour of these pictures may fairly be said to have overwhelmed all critical opposition. From Messrs. Agnew they passed into the possession of Mr. Alexander Henderson of Buscot Park, Berkshire.

In 1885, at the suggestion of his friend. Sir Frederic Leighton, Burne-Jones was nominated (without his knowledge) for election at the Royal Academy, and he was chosen A.R.A. But he exhibited only one picture at Burlington House, ‘The Depths of the Sea,’ in 1886. Like all who saw it there, the artist found that the picture looked strange and ineffective among its incongruous surroundings; he sent nothing more to the Academy, and finally in 1893 he resigned his connection with that body, ‘not from pique,’ to use the words of a letter which he addressed at the time to the present writer, ‘but because I am not fitted for these associations, where I find myself committed to much that I dislike.’ It was at this moment that the New Gallery was holding a representative exhibition of Burne-Jones’s works, which was repeated on a fuller scale, and with still greater success, six months after his death, simultaneously with a very choice exhibition of his pen, pencil, and chalk drawings at the Burlington Fine Arts Club.

In 1878 ‘Merlin and Vivien,’ or ‘The Beguiling of Merlin,’ was sent to the Paris Exhibition, and from that time forward the name of Burne-Jones was held in high honour by the French. The ‘Cophetua’ was regarded with sincere admiration when it was shown in the exhibition of 1889; a like acclaim greeted the artist’s pictures at Brussels in 1897, and in the English pavilion at the Paris Exhibition of 1900; and much success, both on the continent and in America, as well as in England, awaited the magnificent reproductions of a hundred of his works which were made by the Berlin Photographic Company. Of outward signs of honour he received his share; numerous foreign medals were awarded to