Truth is often stranger than fiction, isn't it? Head to the newly opened venue of Charleston in Lewes for Dorothy Hepworth and Patricia Preece: An Untold Story , an exhibition that relates a piece of art history that, you have to say, would make a good film. And here are the two principal characters: Dorothy, on the left, a talented graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art , and her fellow student, friend, lover, partner and collaborator Patricia, perhaps not quite so talented, but both passionate about art. The photograph seems to tell you a lot. Dorothy looks a little bit awkward and ill at ease, slightly frumpy, androgynous even. Patricia appears confident, glamorous, exuberant, perhaps a little.... possessive? But maybe we're getting ahead of ourselves. We need to establish the plot.... The rather retiring Hepworth and the outgoing, gregarious Preece became inseparable as students, and they planned to set up a studio together after graduation. In 1922, Preece took exam
Edward Burne-Jones was a terrific draughtsman and a highly accomplished painter. So why is this new exhibition of his work at Tate Britain so remarkably dissatisfying? Perhaps because it seems almost impossible to relate to his pictures, certainly from a modern perspective. There are religious works and the odd portrait, but most of what Burne-Jones was painting and designing in the second half of the 19th century was his own interpretation of classical antiquity, medieval chivalry or fairy tales.
Clearly, the Pre-Raphaelites, of whom Burne-Jones was the last major figure, and William Morris's Arts & Crafts movement, with which he was closely associated, took the view that the Victorian industrial age was a terrible thing, and they wanted to hark back to what they saw as a purer, gentler, more enlightened era. But Burne-Jones was born in 1833, a year after Manet and a year before Whistler and Degas. They took on the modern world. Burne-Jones just seems to have retreated into fantasy.
This is a really well put-together show at the Tate, and the initial impression is of Burne-Jones as an inventive artist who's even a bit controversial (though only a little bit). But as you work your way round you get the feeling that his art never really reaches out to you. Do we care about the people he's painting, do we empathise with them? Well, no; there's no common ground.
The year was 1875; the year Anthony Trollope published The Way We Live Now, his great novel about the unacceptable face of Victorian capitalism, and Parliament passed legislation to improve public sanitation, clear slums and prevent the adulteration of food. Aspiring Tory politician and future Prime Minister Arthur Balfour commissioned Burne-Jones to make paintings for his London drawing-room, leaving the subject to the artist. Burne-Jones chose the myth of Perseus, the slayer of the Gorgon Medusa. The triumph of good over evil, to be sure, but....
Anyway, you'll recall that on his way back from slaying Medusa, Perseus also rescued Andromeda, who had been chained naked to a rock and exposed to a sea monster because of her mother's claims about her beauty. Andromeda was obviously a favourite with Renaissance and later painters because of the opportunity it offered for titillating female nudity wrapped in a cloak of classical learning. Titian's Andromeda writhes in anguished terror, while Rembrandt's really does look as if she's been exposed to the elements. And what about in Burne-Jones's The Rock of Doom?
Andromeda looks as if she's only been there for about five minutes, and certainly not long enough to allow any pubic hair to grow back on her gym-toned body. That coastline doesn't seem very storm-lashed, either. If anything, she seems bored by the entire thing. And if she doesn't care, why should the viewer? Burne-Jones never actually completed his 10 pictures for Balfour, but the Tate has recreated the cycle with loans from Stuttgart and Southampton that include his preliminary work. Very well done, but Burne-Jones's overall effect is just a little, well, tedious.
Also in this show is his other major narrative series, The Briar Rose, based on the Brothers Grimm's retelling of Sleeping Beauty. The colours and the paintwork are indeed gorgeous. The pictures must have looked absolutely splendid in the country mansion of financier and politician Alexander Henderson. And perhaps if we'd seen them on their own, rather than amid a multitude of other works by Burne-Jones, we'd have been charmed. But you can't get away from the feeling that they are, in a sense, just very expensive and sophisticated wallpaper.
It was Burne-Jones's drawing skills that won him the early admiration of the Pre-Raphaelites. Dante Gabriel Rossetti proclaimed his output "unequalled by anything except perhaps Albert Dürer's finest work," which is a little bit preposterous, even if some of the preparatory studies we see a little way into the show are very fine. The early work is notable for its tendency to fill every inch of the paper with detail, leaving no white space uncovered.
But Burne-Jones was soon to branch out, into furniture and stained glass as well as painting. The Annunciation and the Adoration of the Magi, an altarpiece for St Paul's in Brighton from 1861, is still full of detail, but the effect is less busy. The use of gold leaf is among features that reflect Burne-Jones's study of the early Renaissance. William Morris is the model for the bearded king; Jane Morris is the Virgin.
Burne-Jones became known as a bold and innovative watercolourist, with works such as The Wine of Circe, in which the goddess in a copper-coloured robe stoops to drip into a vessel of wine her potion, which will transform Odysseus's crew into swine. Below her black panthers prowl, while through a window behind her can be seen Odysseus's ships. It's very much got the feel of an Alma-Tadema.
Having been elected to the prestigious Old Watercolour Society in 1864, Burne-Jones resigned in anger six years later after a bit of controversy over Phyllis and Demophoön. They couldn't cope with a full-frontal male nude. Though those androgynous faces may have had something to do with it. The gods had turned Phyllis into an almond tree, by the way, after she killed herself when Demophoön failed to come back as promised. When he did return, he embraced the tree, and she burst forth from it.
Having quit the watercolour society, Burne-Jones felt the pressure was off, and he could paint the pictures he wanted to. And there's a big room here in this show filled with his exhibition pictures, large canvases with melancholy subjects in pseudo-historical settings. Love Among the Ruins is an early example. Those crumbling romantic buildings, the briar rose, music, the putti in the background, the somewhat androgynous couple certainly avoiding any eye-contact with you, the viewer.
Burne-Jones became known throughout Europe when King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid was shown at the Paris International Exhibition in 1889. The king falls in love at first sight with a girl of the lowest social standing, as of course they tended to do. Egalitarian socialist message or sheer fantasy? In any case, a painting that was to inspire Symbolist painters on the Continent like Fernand Khnopff.
The one break from all this medievalist fantasy world, which sometimes feels like you're in a 1970s Athena poster shop, comes in the form of a room of portraits. And even here, we're left feeling that we're somehow divorced from real life: These seem to be people who don't want their portrait painted, who remain very distant from us, especially Lady Windsor, captured full-length but who looks as if she'd prefer to turn straight back round.
The unrelenting escapism continues on into the final room. You're not surprised to find that the Holy Grail tapestries that take up one wall have been lent by an old rocker: Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin. And then there's the piano made for the daughter of one of Burne-Jones's main patrons. Beautiful, but surely just an imitation of Renaissance Florence?
And so we left, feeling rather disenchanted and, despite all that beauty and skill, very much unmoved.
Edward Burne-Jones, The Rose Bower, 1885-90, The Faringdon Collection Trust
Edward Burne-Jones, The Annunciation and the Adoration of the Magi, 1861, Tate
Edward Burne-Jones, Phyllis and Demophoön, 1870, Birmingham Museums Trust. © Birmingham Museums Trust
Edward Burne-Jones, Love Among the Ruins, 1870-73, Private collection
Edward Burne-Jones, The Graham Piano, 1879-80, Private collection. Photographer: Roger Perry
Clearly, the Pre-Raphaelites, of whom Burne-Jones was the last major figure, and William Morris's Arts & Crafts movement, with which he was closely associated, took the view that the Victorian industrial age was a terrible thing, and they wanted to hark back to what they saw as a purer, gentler, more enlightened era. But Burne-Jones was born in 1833, a year after Manet and a year before Whistler and Degas. They took on the modern world. Burne-Jones just seems to have retreated into fantasy.
This is a really well put-together show at the Tate, and the initial impression is of Burne-Jones as an inventive artist who's even a bit controversial (though only a little bit). But as you work your way round you get the feeling that his art never really reaches out to you. Do we care about the people he's painting, do we empathise with them? Well, no; there's no common ground.
The year was 1875; the year Anthony Trollope published The Way We Live Now, his great novel about the unacceptable face of Victorian capitalism, and Parliament passed legislation to improve public sanitation, clear slums and prevent the adulteration of food. Aspiring Tory politician and future Prime Minister Arthur Balfour commissioned Burne-Jones to make paintings for his London drawing-room, leaving the subject to the artist. Burne-Jones chose the myth of Perseus, the slayer of the Gorgon Medusa. The triumph of good over evil, to be sure, but....
Anyway, you'll recall that on his way back from slaying Medusa, Perseus also rescued Andromeda, who had been chained naked to a rock and exposed to a sea monster because of her mother's claims about her beauty. Andromeda was obviously a favourite with Renaissance and later painters because of the opportunity it offered for titillating female nudity wrapped in a cloak of classical learning. Titian's Andromeda writhes in anguished terror, while Rembrandt's really does look as if she's been exposed to the elements. And what about in Burne-Jones's The Rock of Doom?
Also in this show is his other major narrative series, The Briar Rose, based on the Brothers Grimm's retelling of Sleeping Beauty. The colours and the paintwork are indeed gorgeous. The pictures must have looked absolutely splendid in the country mansion of financier and politician Alexander Henderson. And perhaps if we'd seen them on their own, rather than amid a multitude of other works by Burne-Jones, we'd have been charmed. But you can't get away from the feeling that they are, in a sense, just very expensive and sophisticated wallpaper.
But Burne-Jones was soon to branch out, into furniture and stained glass as well as painting. The Annunciation and the Adoration of the Magi, an altarpiece for St Paul's in Brighton from 1861, is still full of detail, but the effect is less busy. The use of gold leaf is among features that reflect Burne-Jones's study of the early Renaissance. William Morris is the model for the bearded king; Jane Morris is the Virgin.
Having been elected to the prestigious Old Watercolour Society in 1864, Burne-Jones resigned in anger six years later after a bit of controversy over Phyllis and Demophoön. They couldn't cope with a full-frontal male nude. Though those androgynous faces may have had something to do with it. The gods had turned Phyllis into an almond tree, by the way, after she killed herself when Demophoön failed to come back as promised. When he did return, he embraced the tree, and she burst forth from it.
The one break from all this medievalist fantasy world, which sometimes feels like you're in a 1970s Athena poster shop, comes in the form of a room of portraits. And even here, we're left feeling that we're somehow divorced from real life: These seem to be people who don't want their portrait painted, who remain very distant from us, especially Lady Windsor, captured full-length but who looks as if she'd prefer to turn straight back round.
The unrelenting escapism continues on into the final room. You're not surprised to find that the Holy Grail tapestries that take up one wall have been lent by an old rocker: Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin. And then there's the piano made for the daughter of one of Burne-Jones's main patrons. Beautiful, but surely just an imitation of Renaissance Florence?
Practicalities
Edward Burne-Jones: Pre-Raphaelite Visionary is on at Tate Britain until February 24 and is open daily from 1000 to 1800. Full-price tickets cost £18; they're available online here. The nearest London Underground station is Pimlico on the Victoria Line, about five minutes' walk away.
Images
Edward Burne-Jones, The Rock of Doom, 1885-88, Staatsgalerie, StuttgartEdward Burne-Jones, The Rose Bower, 1885-90, The Faringdon Collection Trust
Edward Burne-Jones, The Annunciation and the Adoration of the Magi, 1861, Tate
Edward Burne-Jones, Phyllis and Demophoön, 1870, Birmingham Museums Trust. © Birmingham Museums Trust
Edward Burne-Jones, Love Among the Ruins, 1870-73, Private collection
Edward Burne-Jones, The Graham Piano, 1879-80, Private collection. Photographer: Roger Perry
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