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Edward Burne-Jones, An Angel with Palm and Lyre

Photo courtesy of Dave Penman (All Rights Reserved)

Details

Country House
Mells Manor
Title(s)
An Angel with Palm and Lyre
Date
1881
Medium and support
Fresco secco
Dimensions
Overall height: 172 cm, Overall width: 55 cm
Artist
Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898)
Catalogue Number
MM77

Description

While he was still an undergraduate at Exeter College, Oxford, Edward Burne-Jones met and formed a life-long friendship with William Morris (1834–1896) who went on to establish the Arts & Crafts Movement in Britain. By the 1870s, Burne-Jones and Morris were collaborating on a series of stained-glass designs in churches around the country. The design of this vibrant fresco was based on the left-hand light of the east window of St George’s Chapel, Christ Church, Oxford, designed by Burne-Jones and crafted by William Morris in 1875. An identical graphite study by Burne-Jones, An Angel with Palm and Lyre (c.1874) survives at the Huntington Library and Art Museum, San Marino, California. The design was repeated for the south window of the south transept of St Catherine, Baglan, in 1880. The present work is dated 1881 in the 1882 inventory of William Graham’s collection.1

by Devon Cox

Bibliography

Albert Charles Sewter, The Stained Glass of William Morris and his Circle, vol. 2, New Haven : Yale University Press, 1975, vol. 2, p. 146, fig. 497


John Christian, Christopher Newall and Julian Hartnoll, The Reproductive Engravings after Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, London : Julian Hartnoll, 1988, pp. 42–5


Stephen Wildman and John Christian, Edward Burne-Jones, Victorian Artist-Dreamer, New York : Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1998, no. 55, illus. in colour


Oliver Garnett, 'The Letters and Collection of William Graham: Pre-Raphaelite Patron and Pre-Raphael Collector', The Walpole Society, vol. 62, 2000, p. 286, b1


Footnotes

  1. For the inventory see Oliver Garnett, ‘The Letters and Collection of William Graham: Pre-Raphaelite Patron and Pre-Raphaelite Collector’, The Walpole Society, vol. 62, 2000, p. 286.

    1

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