Masterpieces in Colour

Burne-Jones

Apart from its technical beauty and its charm of design, this picture has a special interest as the only contribution which the artist ever made to the exhibitions of the Royal Academy. It was shown at Burlington House in 1886, and was painted purposely, during the months that intervened between his election as an Associate in the summer of 1885 and the opening of the 1886 exhibition. In the treatment of the subject there is a touch of slightly grim humour, unusual in the art of Burne-Jones, a humour which finds expression particularly in the face of the mermaid, who drags a human being to her cave at the bottom of the sea without thinking or caring that her sport means death to him. The place which should be assigned to Sir Edward Burne-Jones in the history of modern art is by no means easy to define, for his work with its unusual qualities of intention and achievement does not lend itself readily to classification. At the outset of his career he might with some[Pg 10] justice have been numbered with the Pre-Raphaelites, because the first influences to which he responded were those which directed the Pre-Raphaelite movement, and because in his earliest productions he showed that these influences had counted for much in the shaping of his sthetic inclinations. But as he developed he made plainer and more convincing the assertion of his individuality, he ceased to be simply a follower of a movement, and evolved for himself a system of sthetic practice which was personal both in aim and in manner of expression. That in formulating this system he borrowed much from early Italian art, that he based himself upon certain remote masters, with whose primitive methods he was deeply in sympathy, can scarcely be denied; but in this reference to the past[Pg 11] he did not show the blind readiness to imitate which is the vice of the copyist; he altered and adapted, varied this principle and modified that detail, until he had with the material he collected built up a quite complete superstructure, which was Italian only in its foundation. And in this process of building up he was guided surely enough by a right instinct for decorative propriety, an instinct which was partly innate, partly the outcome of associations by which he was largely affected throughout his life. If his personality had been less strong, or his sthetic preference less defined, these associations might easily have cramped his imagination and narrowed him into the repetition of a set formula; but his intelligence was so keen and his conviction concerning his artistic mission was so clear, that he[Pg 12] was able to overcome all the obstacles by which he might have been turned from his right course. His career, thanks to the consistency with which he worked, became a record of continuous effort to realise an ideal that lacked neither nobility nor intellectual variety. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 41583
Author: Baldry, A. L. (Alfred Lys)
Release Date: Dec 9, 2012
Format: eBook
Language: English