Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/405

Burne-Jones him; his university made him an honorary D.C.L. at the Encænia of 1881, his college (Exeter) elected him an honorary fellow in 1882, and in 1894 Queen Victoria, on the advice of Mr. Gladstone, conferred a baronetcy upon him. He died suddenly, in the morning of 17 June 1898; a memorial service in his honour was held at Westminster Abbey, and his remains rest in the churchyard at Rottingdean, near Brighton, at which village he had his country home. He left a son, Philip, the present baronet, a practising artist, and a daughter, Margaret, married to Mr. J. W. Mackail.

Portraits of Burne-Jones were painted by Mr. G. F. Watts, K. A., and by the painter’s son Philip. Both pictures belong to Lady Burne-Jones.

On 16 and 18 July 1898, what were called the ‘remaining works’ of the painter—chiefly drawings and studies, largo and small—were sold at Christie’s, when 206 lots realised almost 30,000l. These, however, represented only a small part of the truly immense output of a life of incessant and exhausting labour. Soon afterwards a movement was organised among his admirers for the purchase of one of his chief pictures for the nation; the result was the acquisition, from the executors of the earl of Wharncliffe, of the famous ‘King Cophetua,’ which now hangs in the National Gallery. A very interesting book of drawings, containing designs which were never carried out, was left by the artist to the British Museum.

A notice of Burne-Jones ought not to terminate without some reference to other sides of his talent than those represented by his finished pictures. His decorative work was extremely voluminous; for instance, the list of cartoons for stained-glass windows which he furnished to Mr. Malcolm Bell’s book has scarcely a blank year between 1857 and 1898, and the number mounts up to several hundreds. The five earliest (1857–1861) were executed by Messrs. Powell, the rest from 1861 onwards by Messrs. Morris & Co. Burne-Jones also made a few decorations for houses (notably for the Earl of Carlisle’s house in Kensington) and a large number of designs for tapestry and needlework, among which the ‘Launcelot’ series for Stanmore Hall is the chief. He gave much time and thought to his design called ‘The Tree of Life,’ executed in mosaic by Salviati for the American church in Rome. This work he regarded with particular affection, for, as he said, ‘it is to be in Rome, and it is to last for eternity.’ Again, his illustrations for books, although not numerous, are extremely memorable. He was genuinely interested in Morris’s Kelmscott Press, although he was in no way concerned in its management; he made the drawings to illustrate the famous Kelmscott Chaucer, which are worthy alike of the genius of artist and poet. Chaucer, however, had no exclusive command over his literary affections, for, as is evident from nearly all his pictures, he was a passionate student of Celtic romance, whether represented by Sir Thomas Malory and other English writers, or by the documents published by French scholars such as M. Gaston Paris. It may be added that his feeling for the Celtic race was something more than literary. Far away from politics as he was, he was deeply stirred by the Parnell movement, and was an enthusiastic admirer of the Irish leader. As to other interests he had a scholarly and exact knowledge of all kinds of mediæval tales, Eastern and Western, was familiar with D’Herbelot and Silvestre de Sacy, was also interested in mediæval Jewish lore, and devoted to Marco Polo and the travellers of the middle ages. So, too, as many of his pictures prove, he studied the Greek mythology from its romantic side, and would devote untiring labour to such a subject as the Perseus myth whenever, as Chaucer and the mediæval writers had done before him, he found it possible to treat a classical story in the romantic spirit.

It is too soon to attempt to form any final judgment as to Burne-Jones’s place in art. In days when there is no universal agreement upon first principles, and when it is regarded as an open question whether an artist should follow the ideals of Botticelli or the ideals of Velasquez, it is certain that the work of a painter so individual as Burne-Jones will provoke as much antagonism as admiration. To those who dislike ‘literary’ painting—that is, the painting which greatly depends for its effect upon the associations of poetry and other forms of literature—his pictures will never give unmixed pleasure. Literary they assuredly are; but they are also, in the highest sense of the term, decorative. No artist of the time has surpassed him as a master of intricate line, or has studied more curiously and successfully the inmost secrets of colour. Of the first, examples may be seen in all his stained-glass windows, in such works as the Virgil drawings, and in pictures like ‘Love among the Ruins;’ of the latter we have instances of extraordinary subtlety in the Pygmalion series, and of extraordinary richness and depth in the ‘Chant d’ Amour’ and ‘King Cophetua.’ It is surely safe to say that gifts like these of themselves entitle their possessor to be called a great painter. The