Gail-Nina Anderson Artists Series 2 of 3 | The Art of Sir Edward Burne-Jones

The Art of Sir Edward Burne-Jones (Lecture given by Whitworth Wallis in 1911)

The mirror of Venus, by Sir Edward Burne-Jones | Image sourced from WikiComms

Birmingham Art Gallery has the largest holding of drawings by the late Victorian painter and designer Edward Burne-Jones, so it seems appropriate that in 1911 the artist’s career was the subject of a Lit & Phil lecture by the Gallery’s first director, Whitworth Wallis. A modern perspective on Burne-Jones may be rather different – are we attracted by the fairy-tale Romanticism of his subjects, set in a timeless, dream-like world influenced by Mediaeval art, do we look beyond this to the near abstract stylisation of his manner or are we more engaged by the eclecticism of his approach, which involved oil and watercolour paintings and book illustrations as well as designs for stained glass and the occasional painted piano? This talk examines the status of the artist as an idiosyncratic second-generation Pre-Raphaelite who turned away from Naturalism to devise and embrace his own Aesthetic mode.

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