1833-1867

Front Cover
This classic work from 1904 is a unique and comprehensive source: a fascinating account of the life and times of the painter and decorative artist Edward Burne-Jones, written by his wife Georgiana shortly after the artist's death. The account begins with Burne-Jones's childhood and schooldays in Birmingham and his student days at Oxford, and moves on to describe his lifelong friendship with William Morris, the important influence on him of Rossetti, and his development as one of the most important late Victorian artists and a key figure in the Aesthetic Movement. Georgiana Burne-Jones lets her characters speak for themselves whenever possible, quoting extensively from letters, conversations and reminiscences. Burne-Jones was a formidable scholar and antiquarian and took a lively interest in current events; the memoirs include his reflections on a wide range of topics, such as art and artists, contemporary politics, education, the future of science and the art of living. The Memorials are therefore much more than just a biography. In recording Burne-Jones's many friendships with artists and such literary figures as Ruskin, Browning, Swinburne and George Eliot, the author sheds important light on the whole cultural climate in which Burne-Jones was working. -- Amazon.com
 

Contents

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 76 - Locksley Hall, that in the distance overlooks the sandy tracts, And the hollow ocean-ridges roaring into cataracts. Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest, Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West. Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro...
Page 126 - I knew no one who had ever seen one, or had been in a studio, and of all men who lived on earth, the one that I wanted to see was Rossetti. I had no dream...
Page 160 - SWERVE to the left, son Roger," he said, " When you catch his eyes through the helmet-slit, Swerve to the left, then out at his head, And the Lord God give you joy of it!
Page 73 - Burne/Jones, the city ended abruptly, as if a wall had been about it, and you came suddenly upon the meadows. There was little brick in the city, it was either grey with stone or yellow with the wash of the pebble/dash in the poorer streets.
Page 137 - A glorious day it has been - a glorious day, one to be remembered by the side of the most notable ones in my life: for whilst I was painting and Topsy was making drawings in Rossetti's studio, there entered the greatest genius that is on earth alive, William Holman Hunt - such a grand'looking fellow, such a splendour of a man, with a great wiry golden beard, and faithful violet eyes - oh, such a man.
Page 126 - I've dropped my personality. I'ma correspondent with Ruskin and my future title is ' the man who wrote to Ruskin and got an answer by return '
Page 213 - Looks commercing with the skies" expresses it without exaggeration. He was restless beyond words, scarcely standing still at all and almost dancing as he walked, while even in sitting he moved continually, seeming to keep time, by a swift movement of the hands at the wrists, and sometimes of the feet also, with some inner rhythm of excitement. He was courteous and affectionate and unsuspicious, and faithful beyond most people to those he really loved. The biting wit which filled his talk so as at...
Page 57 - When I was fifteen or sixteen he (Newman) taught me so much that I do mind — things that will never be out of me. In an age of sofas and cushions he taught me to be indifferent to comfort, and in an age of materialism he taught me to venture all on the unseen.
Page 57 - ... me when life began, and I was equipped before I went to Oxford with a real good panoply and it has never failed me. So if this world cannot tempt me with money or luxury — and it can't — or anything it has in its trumpery treasure-house, it is most of all because he said it in a way that touched me, not scolding nor forbidding, nor much leading — walking with me a step in front.
Page 128 - I have now met. One of the nicest young fellows in — Dreamland. For there most of the writers in that miraculous piece of literature seem to be.

Bibliographic information