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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 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 Æsthetic 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 Æsthetic 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 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 Æsthetic 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 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.

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It is probable that some of his consistency, and a very large part of his artistic conviction, came from the manner of his preparation for the profession in which he attained such exceptional success. Unlike most artists he did not begin by acquiring a knowledge of the mechanism of painting, and did not proceed to apply trained technical skill in experiments intended to determine the direction in which he might practise profitably in after life. In his case the process was reversed, for his direction was settled before he had learned even the rudiments of pictorial practice, and the time which other men would have given to experiment he devoted to seeking how he would best realise the ideas that were finally formed in his mind. Tentative work, to test the popular point of view, he never produced; he began straight away with what he knew to be his right material, and the only difference which is to be noticed between his first and his last paintings is a difference in technical facility. The uncertainties of handling in his earlier pictures disappeared in those which he painted in later life, but of mental uncertainty no trace is at any time to be discovered.

Yet the curious fact must be noted that this artist, with his strong personality, his great gifts, and his absorbing devotion to a splendid ideal, chose his profession by a kind of afterthought—almost by accident. There is no record in his case of a boyhood spent in struggles against a fate which seemed to forbid him all satisfaction of his dearest aspirations; there is not even evidence that he had any artistic aspirations at all. He grew up, practically to manhood, before he discovered that he had either the wish or the capacity to attempt any form of Æsthetic expression, and his powers lay completely dormant through all those youthful years which have been to most other artists a time of longing after the apparently unattainable and of striving to follow the promptings of nature and temperament.

This strange torpidity of the artistic side of his intelligence was, no doubt, due to the surroundings among which he passed his childhood. He was born on August 28, 1833, at Birmingham, where there was in those days little enough to foster a love of art, and in the respectable but dull atmosphere of a middle-class home he had no chance of any awakening. His mental activity, however, was shown in the zest with which he threw himself into the study of the classics during the seven or eight years that he spent at King Edward's School. He gained at that time a very thorough knowledge of the classic writings in general and of classic mythology in particular, which was amplified in after life by constant reading; and he acquired a student-like habit of research into the learning of the past which served him well when the time came for him to picture the fancies that were forming in his mind.

But at first the purpose of his education was to fit him for the walk of life which his father wished him to follow. He was, it was decided, to enter the Church, and in 1853, having won a scholarship at Exeter College, he went up to Oxford ready and willing enough to work for success in the profession which seemed so well suited to him. He had at that time no feeling that his real vocation lay in quite another direction, or that there was any different way in which his studious mind might be exercised. The idea of taking orders was not uncongenial to him, and he began his Oxford life in no spirit of rebellion against the career which had been mapped out by his elders.

At Oxford, however, came his awakening. He found himself in contact there with quite a new phase of existence, in an atmosphere which was made doubly impressive by its unlikeness to any that he had previously known, and among surroundings which by their novelty had a great power to stimulate his imagination. Under such conditions the expansion of his mind was unusually rapid, and the arousing of his dormant Æsthetic instincts followed immediately. This latter development of a side of his nature, of which previously he could have been, at best, only dimly conscious, was greatly assisted by his friendship with a remarkable man who had entered Exeter College on the same day that he did, and who had come to Oxford with the same intention of eventually taking holy orders. This man, William Morris, was destined to play a most important part in British art activities, and by his militant Æstheticism to bring about many momentous changes in the public taste; and the chance which brought him and Edward Burne-Jones together, when they were both at the most impressionable period of life, was especially fortunate.

The association between the two undergraduates quickly became one of the closest intimacy. They had mentally much in common, and in them both was a strain of enthusiasm and poetic fantasy which was an inheritance from a Celtic ancestry—they were both Welshmen by descent—and by which their whole attitude to modern existence was determined. Morris had, perhaps, the more vehement personality and the greater share of the fighting instinct, while Burne-Jones was more of a dreamer and readier to occupy himself with abstract fancies; but these small differences of temperament made their friendship the more mutually valuable, and helped appreciably to increase the influence which the one had on the other. At any rate, these days at Oxford saw the beginning of a kind of mental partnership which gave ultimately to the world a great artist and a brilliant leader of a wide art movement which has since done much to alter the whole spirit of domestic decoration in this country.

A more immediate effect of the intimacy between Morris and Burne-Jones was, however, the weakening of the intention which had brought them to the university. The more they dreamed and talked the further their idea of finding a career in the Church receded, and the stronger grew the desire which both of them felt for the pursuit of some form of art. While they were thus hesitating over their plans for the future, Burne-Jones received a sort of revelation which fixed finally his half-formed intention to become a painter. He saw by chance some works by Rossetti, an illustration to a poem by William Allingham and a water-colour, "Dante's celebration of Beatrice's Birthday," and these, with some notable Pre-Raphaelite pictures, like Holman Hunt's "Light of the World" and "The Christian Priest escaping from the Druids," which were then at Oxford, gave him a veritable inspiration. For Rossetti in particular he conceived immediately a passionate adoration, and to sit at the feet of such a master seemed to him the noblest aim in life. From that moment, indeed, his fate was decided, though some little time had yet to elapse before his dreams could be realised and his plans could be put into working shape.

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For the abandonment of all the ideas which had brought him to the university was no small matter and not to be lightly undertaken. He had to think of the disappointment at home which such action on his part would cause, and he had also to consider what would be his own position while he was preparing himself for a profession of which he had not so far had the smallest practical experience. So, with little heart in his work, he went on reading for his degree until the winter of 1855, when he came up to London with the intention of seeing in the flesh the man whom he had hitherto worshipped afar off. He was introduced to Rossetti at the house of Mr. Vernon Lushington, and by the kindly painter, who discerned the promise in the young man's tentative drawings, he was given the heartiest encouragement. A little later he laid before Rossetti all his hopes and fears, his doubts whether or not he would be right in leaving Oxford with the purpose which had taken him there still unfulfilled, and his desire to devote himself irrevocably to the artistic calling; and instead of suggestions of such compromises as prudence might have dictated, he received advice to lose no time in entering upon the career for which he was plainly destined by nature and inclination.

Rossetti's interest in his young admirer was no momentary matter; he backed up the advice he had offered by taking him as a pupil and by aiding him in many ways to gain a footing in the art world. When Burne-Jones, having at last shaken the dust of Oxford off his feet, settled in London early in 1856, he found Rossetti quite ready to supervise his education and to lead him to that fuller knowledge of art practice which he so sorely lacked. The method of education adopted departed very definitely from accustomed lines; it did not involve attendance at any art school, and it imposed no prolonged course of drawing from antique figures or of painting still-life studies from groups of ill-assorted objects. On the contrary, the pupil was encouraged to begin at what would be considered by academic teachers the wrong end of things—to struggle, all unversed as he was in technicalities, with the difficulties of creative effort. Rossetti's studio was thrown open to him so that he might watch the progress of the pictures which were on the easel, and a number of the master's drawings and studies were lent to him to help him in his work at home; but what training he received was more in the nature of sympathetic guidance in his attempts at self-expression than of formal direction along the lines of a recognised school system. Its good effects were shown in the manner of the young man's development and in the rapid growth of his individuality; its bad effects in the persistence of defects of draughtsmanship and brushwork, which were overcome at last by his extraordinary industry and dogged determination to master all the difficulties of his craft.

To his care and advice concerning his pupil's manner of working Rossetti added consideration for his financial position. Burne-Jones, with but slender resources and with little chance as yet of earning the means of support, was having a somewhat hard struggle, which Rossetti did his best to relieve by introducing him to friends who would interest themselves in him, and by helping him to get such work as he was capable of carrying out. One important commission was obtained about the end of 1856, and this commission deserves special mention because it gave Burne-Jones his first experience in a branch of design in which he was destined to become an acknowledged master. Messrs. Powell, the glass-makers, who were making great efforts to improve the quality of stained glass, had applied to Rossetti for a design for a window. He declined to undertake this work, and recommended his pupil instead; and Burne-Jones accordingly prepared a design which was not only accepted by the firm but enthusiastically approved by Ruskin, who was, so Rossetti declared in a letter written at the time, "driven wild with joy" by the merit and quality of the work. This cartoon was followed during the next three or four years by several others drawn for the same firm.

Much that is important in the record of the painter's life is to be assigned to this short period between the beginning of 1857 and the end of 1860. In addition to his designs for stained glass, he produced a large number of pen-and-ink and water-colour drawings, and made his first experiments in oil-painting; and he took part in the decoration of the library of the Oxford Union, an ambitious scheme entered into by Rossetti at the suggestion of Mr. Woodward, the architect of the building, and carried out, despite many unexpected difficulties, by Rossetti himself and a band of enthusiastic young artists. These decorations, which unfortunately fell into a condition of hopeless decay soon after they were completed, took some six months to execute, and he was engaged upon his share of the work until the early part of 1859. In the autumn of that year he paid his first visit to Italy and studied those early Italian masters with whom, as his after work proved, he was so deeply and intelligently in sympathy. This visit, indeed, brought about a marked change in his artistic outlook and helped to lead him away from the Gothic tendencies which he had first shown—probably as a result of his association with Morris—into a far more pronounced inclination for the Italian manner of design. He was married in the summer of 1860 to Miss Georgina Macdonald, about a month after Rossetti's marriage to Miss Siddal; and in taking this step he certainly showed that he had confidence in his professional prospects, a confidence which was justified by the position he had already made for himself.

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The year 1861 must be particularly noted because it marks the commencement of an undertaking with which Burne-Jones was closely associated for the rest of his life. William Morris, who had also left Oxford in 1856 without waiting to take his degree, had gone for rather less than a year into the office of George Edmund Street, the well-known architect, with some idea of adopting that profession; and then, becoming quickly disillusioned, had after some experiments in painting settled down for a while to literary work. In 1859 he married and went to live in a house which had been built for him at Bexley Heath; and it is said that the difficulty he experienced in getting, for the fitting up of this house, things which would please his fastidious taste and gratify his intense love of beauty, induced him to consider whether he could not actively intervene in the much-needed reformation of the decorative arts. At any rate, less than two years after his marriage, he was busy with the details of a scheme which was ambitious enough to satisfy even his love of big things and in which there were endless possibilities.

This scheme took definite form towards the end of 1861, when the firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Co. was started in Red Lion Square. Burne-Jones, naturally enough, was an active sympathiser with the plans of William Morris, and he showed his sympathy in the most practical manner by putting his talents as a designer at the disposal of the firm. From that time onwards he produced in ever-increasing numbers designs for all kinds of decorative work, stained glass, tapestries, embroideries, book illustration, &c., in which his amazing fertility of imagination and exquisite powers of expression had the fullest scope. The sum total of the work, for which he was responsible during the period of nearly forty years over which his intimate connection with the Morris business extended, was almost incredibly large, and proves convincingly the strenuousness of his lifelong effort.

For it must be remembered that this mass of decorative work did not by any means represent the whole of his achievement, but was, in fact, brought into existence in the intervals of his not less remarkable activity as a picture painter. The number of his finished pictures in different mediums was about two hundred, and his cartoons for stained glass alone make a list of a thousand or more; when to these are added his designs for other purposes, his sketches and studies, and the rough notes by which he gave the first visible shape to the mental images which he proposed to put later on into a completed form, the result arrived at is simply bewildering. Only by the most unremitting industry could he have done so much, and only a man with an abnormally prolific imagination and extraordinary powers of invention could have kept up as he did the high standard of his art.

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The pictorial work of Burne-Jones during the earlier 'sixties marked well the manner in which he was finding his way to the full avowal of his artistic creed. At first he was, as might have been expected, frankly inclined to imitate Rossetti, and to follow closely in methods and sentiment the master whom he worshipped and from whom he had received such invaluable assistance. But gradually this influence waned, as increasing confidence in his own powers enabled him to assert more clearly his individual view of his Æsthetic responsibilities, and as the widening of his experience opened up to him fresh aspects of the artistic problems with which he had to deal. His development was, no doubt, much assisted by a second visit which he paid to Italy in the spring of 1862, a visit in which he had as his companion Ruskin, with whom he was by then on terms of intimacy. He stayed first at Milan and then went on to Venice, where he remained for some while making copies of Tintoretto and other masters for Ruskin, and studying for his own instruction and enjoyment the works of the earlier masters generally and of Carpaccio particularly.

During these earlier years he confined himself almost entirely to working in water-colours, though by his way of using the medium he gained technical results which had more the strength and richness of oils than the delicate transparency of water-colour. The few essays he made in oil-painting at this time were not pictures for exhibition purposes but pure decorations, like the panels for a painted coffer designed by William Morris, and a triptych, with the "Annunciation" as the central panel, and the "Adoration of the Magi" on the wings, which was commissioned by Mr. Bodley for St. Paul's Church at Brighton. Definite recognition of the position he had gained among the younger water-colourists came at the beginning of 1864, when he was elected, with Fred Walker, an associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours. He was advanced to full membership of the Society in 1868, but resigned in 1870 because a foolish accusation of impropriety was brought against one of the compositions he exhibited. He returned, however, in 1886 and remained a member till his death.

By the paintings he showed in the gallery of the "Old Society" he much increased his reputation among discriminating art lovers as an artist of no ordinary importance. People who had known nothing of his work before found something so new in manner and so distinctive in purpose in the achievements of this creator of poetic fantasies that he was given more attention than usually comes to a man who sets before the public things of an unaccustomed type. That he amply deserved this attention cannot be questioned, for already he had acquired sufficient command over the technicalities of water-colour to enable him to put into a quite convincing form fancies which needed particular delicacy of interpretation. Of course, he had still very much to learn—no one knew better than he did how necessary was strenuous labour to overcome his deficiencies as a craftsman—but his deep sincerity gave character and meaning to his paintings, and the poetic beauty of his pictorial inventions fully excused what defects there were in his executive methods.

Indeed, to this early period can be assigned several of the works on which his reputation rests most securely to-day—his "Fair Rosamond," for instance, his first painting of "The Annunciation," a subject which he treated more than once, and his exquisite picture of "The Merciful Knight," in which there was no trace left of Rossetti's direction, but instead a clear expression of a quite personal view of art. No better proof could have been given of the strength of his character than was afforded by the rapidity with which he found his own way, and by the completeness of his emancipation from the influence of a man who was both his master and his friend—an influence which plainly dominated him when he painted his earliest water-colours of "Clara von Bork" and "Sidonia von Bork," both of which were entirely in Rossetti's manner. But in the three or four years which intervened between the production of these two little pictures and the completion of the far more ambitious composition, "The Merciful Knight," he had learned the secret of his own powers, and he had found how unnecessary it was for him to lean for support upon any one else.

With this knowledge of himself, and with this consciousness of his capacity to take an independent position in the art world, came an increase of his activity as a painter. His water-colours became more numerous and more important, and he began to paint in oils several large pictures which he worked at with characteristic patience, setting them aside often for quite considerable periods and returning to them every now and again as opportunity offered. His manner of working, indeed, showed plainly the fertility of his mind; new ideas occurred to him in rapid succession, and his habit was to put them into a first rough shape on paper or canvas and to leave them to be carried to completion by slow stages with often long intervals between. One result of his method was that he frequently repeated the same subject with variations in treatment that were the outcome of some fresh consideration of the motive—each repetition, however, was an independent conception, not a mere reproduction of what he had done before.

But there was another result which must be noted, because it has to be taken into account in any attempt to make a chronological list of his paintings or to define the character of his art at different periods—the works he exhibited were not put before the public in anything like the order of their production. Sometimes a picture which had been painted only a few months before was shown with one which had been for years in his studio awaiting some comparatively small additions to bring it to absolute completeness; sometimes all the things he exhibited in a particular year were new works; sometimes old ones which had been taken up and put aside over and over again. Consequently, it is useless to try to classify his productions exactly, and it is hopeless to base any theories about his development as an artist upon the sequence of his public appearances. All that can be said is that his evolution was steady and progressive, and that his apparent reversions now and again to his earlier manner were due not to any halting in his conviction but simply to the fact that some piece of work which had been lying by, possibly for years, had at last been finished and exhibited. Practically the only periods which can be recognised in his art are the comparatively brief one when he was definitely under Rossetti's influence, and the far longer one when he was working out his own destiny unassisted. A certain inclination towards Rossetti's colour feeling he retained for some while after he had freed himself of the technical mannerisms which he derived from his master, and for nearly twenty years traces of this colour sympathy can be detected, but for the rest of his career he was as individual in his management of colour as he was in design or in the sentiment of his work.

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This point needs to be elaborated for the sake of clearing up any misapprehensions which might arise from his more or less erratic way of exhibiting his work. As an example, when he exhibited for the first time in 1864 in the gallery of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours, he showed the "Fair Rosamond," painted in 1862, with the "Annunciation" and "The Merciful Knight," both of which belong to 1863; but in 1865 he sent "A Knight and a Lady," finished just before the exhibition opened, "Green Summer," painted in 1863, and "The Enchantments of Nimue," which was one of the things he produced in 1861 while he was still frankly and unreservedly an imitator of Rossetti. Such an inversion in the order in which his works were set before the public might cause some perplexity to students of his art if they did not realise what was his custom in this matter.

He exhibited in the gallery of the Royal Water Colour Society in 1869 a painting, "The Wine of Circe," which was not only the most important work he had produced up to that time but is also to be counted as one of the most admirable of all his performances; and he showed there in 1870 two other notable works, "Love Disguised as Reason" and "Phyllis and Demophoon." It was over this last painting that the dispute arose which led to his resignation of his membership of the Society; and one of the results of this dispute was that for a space of seven years hardly any of his pictures were seen in public. Indeed, the only things he exhibited during this period were a couple of water-colours, "The Garden of the Hesperides" and "Love among the Ruins," which appeared at the Dudley Gallery in 1873. Both were important additions to the list of his achievements, and the "Love among the Ruins" especially was a painting of exquisite beauty and significance. He repeated this subject in oil some twenty years later, because the original water-colour had been damaged somewhat seriously, and was not, as he considered, capable of repair.

The opening of the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877 gave him his first great opportunity of setting before the mass of art lovers his claims to special attention. Hitherto he had counted in the minds of a few men of taste and sound judgment as an artist of remarkable gifts who promised before long to take high rank in his profession, but by the larger public interested in art matters he was practically undiscovered. That he would have won his way step by step to the position he deserved cannot be doubted; if there had been no break in his activity as an exhibiting painter his successive contributions to the Royal Water Colour Gallery could not have failed to make him widely known. But his reappearance at the Grosvenor Gallery was so dramatic, and so convincing in its proof of the amazing development of his powers, that he leaped at one bound into the place among the greatest of his artistic contemporaries, which he was able to hold for the rest of his life without the possibility of dispute.

For he had not been idle during this seven years of abstention from exhibitions; the period had been rather one of strenuous activity and unceasing production. It saw the completion of several important canvases on which he had laboured long and earnestly, and it saw the commencement of many others which were in later years to be added to the list of his more memorable achievements. In some ways, indeed, it was a fortunate break; it saved him from the need to strive year by year to get pictures finished for specific exhibitions, and it allowed him time for calm reflection about the schemes he desired to work out. It freed him, too, from the temptation—one to which all artists are exposed—to modify the character of his art so that his pictures might be sufficiently effective in the incongruous atmosphere of the ordinary public gallery. He was able to form his style and develop his individuality in the manner he thought best; and then at last to come before the public fully matured and with his Æsthetic purpose absolutely defined.

When the first fruits of this long spell of assiduous effort were seen at the Grosvenor Gallery, Burne-Jones became instantly a power in the art world. The judgment of the few connoisseurs who had hailed "The Wine of Circe" and "Love among the Ruins" as works of the utmost significance, and as revelations of real genius, received wide endorsement; and though some people who were out of sympathy with the spirit of his art were quite ready to attack what they did not understand, their voices were scarcely heard amid the general chorus of approval. Indeed, for such pictures as "The Days of Creation," "The Mirror of Venus," and "The Beguiling of Merlin," exhibited in 1877; "Laus Veneris," "Chant d'Amour," and "Pan and Psyche," which with some others were shown in 1878; the series of four subjects from the story of "Pygmalion and the Image," and the magnificent "Annunciation," in 1879; and that exquisite composition, "The Golden Stairs," which was his sole contribution to the Grosvenor Gallery in 1880, nothing but enthusiastic approval was to be expected from all sincere art lovers; to carp at work so noble in conception and so personal in manner implied an entire want of artistic discretion.

There were two exhibitions at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1881. In the summer one Burne-Jones was not represented, but the winter show included a number of his studies and decorative drawings, among them the large circular panel, "Dies Domini," a water-colour of rare beauty which can be reckoned as one of the most admirable of his designs. In 1882, however, he showed "The Mill," "The Tree of Forgiveness," "The Feast of Peleus," and several smaller paintings; and in 1883 that splendid piece of symbolism, "The Wheel of Fortune," and "The Hours." The following year is memorable for the appearance of the important canvas, "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid," and the less ambitious but even more fascinating "Wood Nymph," in both of which the artist touched quite his highest level of achievement, and gave the most ample proof of the maturity of his powers.

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Like the "Sibylla Delphica" this canvas shows how Burne-Jones was accustomed to treat subjects from the classic myths in the mediÆval spirit to which he inclined by habit and association. In his illustration of a subject from the story of Danae, where she stands watching in wonder the building of the tower of brass which was to be her prison, he has looked at Greek tradition in a way that was partly his own and partly a reflection of William Morris; but the result is none the less persuasive because it does not conform to the Greek convention.