Edward Burne-Jones - Fascinating Flaws
The recent Edward Burne-Jones exhibition at Tate Britain left me feeling like I had over-indulged, the equivalent of consuming a bumper box of chocolates in just one sitting. This is not an unusual analogy where the Pre-Raphaelites are concerned, but I think it's a very useful one. On leaving the seventh and final room, I was exhausted and unable to make a considered assessment of what I had just seen. And it was a considered assessment that I had hoped to come away with, one that cut a swathe through the questions that have dogged the Pre-Raphaelites - and Burne-Jones is no exception here - over the last century or so, not least the assessment of just how great they were as artists or painters. The doyens of the art-world are often quick to dismiss them, a snobbish wave of the hand gesturing instead in the direction of the Renaissance masters (even I hinted towards this in a recent blog on Bellini and Mantegna). And then there's the wider public - and Andrew Lloyd Webber - who invariably love them, attending exhibitions in droves, revelling in the colours, details and subjects.
Lacking this closure, I decided to return, and focus on just one painting. What lingered was one of the final pieces that Burne-Jones had worked upon. Love and the Pilgrim, started in the mid-1860s and completed in 1897 is an enormous canvas whose subject is the God of Love guiding a Pilgrim on a quest. Taken from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Romaunt of the Rose, 'Love' is presented as both part Christian angel but also as Cupid (a lovely bit of thematic subterfuge that adds a welcome dose of erotic danger). Armed with lines from Chaucer, ones that probably inspired the painting, I took my place on a bench opposite and enveloped myself in this one piece of art.
And also on his heed was set
Of roses rede a chapelet.
But nightingales, a ful gret route,
That flyen over his heed aboute.
The starting place for myself, and many of those encountering this painting - I eavesdropped on a number of conversations - seems to be ornithology. Tom Crewe in The London Review of Books, in a very balanced review, pointed out that Burne-Jones was a wonderful painter of birds. Is that a Stonechat ahead of the Angel's left foot?
A friend would later disagree and suggest a bullfinch, and the bird's beak suggested he was right. There is certainly a nightingale in front of the tree-stump. But is the flock above the Angel's head - following on from the poet's lines - those birds behaving in a most un-nightingale way. And all this distraction suddenly reveals a problem. You find yourself getting bogged down in detail and have to remind yourself to return to the whole before working your way inwards.
The composition is relatively simple. Two figures, one guiding the other, out of a thicket of brambles into a relatively tranquil landscape. The locking of the Pilgrim and the Angel's hands hints towards Michelangelo's ceiling.
There is also stunning use of colour, particularly in the clothing. The blue on the Pilgrim's cloak is just wonderful. I also love the way that brambles snarl and dance around the Pilgrim's feet and hands - intricate and mesmerising - although nowhere near as complex and labyrinthine as in the Sleeping Beauty sequence found later in the exhibition. And the feet. As Tom Crewe also mentions, the artist is just wonderful at feet (indeed, on the adjacent wall was the spectacular painting The Golden Staircase with its eighteen pairs of beautifully drawn feet descending a stairwell). Here, the barely discernible flex of the Angel's left foot (see above) over the tree trunk is sumptuous.
Just when you think you are satisfied, though, and can exercise unequivocal praise, the painting crashes down to earth. It's the birds above the Angel's head that do it. Perhaps the effect is meant to lighten the whole, giving the Angel a weightlessness, one that hints towards celerity and speed. It fails though. Less is more would have been a more suitable strategy here, and there's no getting away from the fact that both figures, no matter how beautifully drawn, don't seem particularly fleet of foot.
And in those figures you find the biggest problem, the faces, often the main criticism of Burne-Jones' work. The faces are devoid of personality. They don't even hint at a real person. There's a blankness and passivity that at times is quite terrifying, the features empty, anonymous, as if you are gazing into an abyss. Perhaps that is what Burne-Jones is aiming for, a mysterious enigmatic quality? The trouble is, as Burne-Jones' contemporary Oscar Wilde knew all too well, enigmatic sphinxes often have no secrets worth knowing.
Yet despite all those problems, I still love this painting. Which means my strategy of honing in on just the one work has telescoped the problem rather than solved it. I made my way out, walking unhindered through the Sleeping Beauty brambles, and wondering if Jimmy Page strums his guitar whilst contemplating the Burne-Jones tapestries that he owns. And it strikes me that art that is flawed and problematic can be enjoyed just as much as art that is peerless. It can't all be Rembrandts and Raphaels, and besides, the flaws in lesser artists are often visible because of the aesthetic calibration that comes from the awe that you feel when you gaze at The Night Watch. Burne-Jones' paintings are fascinating and flawed, and that is an artistic legacy that is certainly worth paying attention to.
 |
| Love and the Pilgrim (1897) |
Lacking this closure, I decided to return, and focus on just one painting. What lingered was one of the final pieces that Burne-Jones had worked upon. Love and the Pilgrim, started in the mid-1860s and completed in 1897 is an enormous canvas whose subject is the God of Love guiding a Pilgrim on a quest. Taken from Geoffrey Chaucer's The Romaunt of the Rose, 'Love' is presented as both part Christian angel but also as Cupid (a lovely bit of thematic subterfuge that adds a welcome dose of erotic danger). Armed with lines from Chaucer, ones that probably inspired the painting, I took my place on a bench opposite and enveloped myself in this one piece of art.
And also on his heed was set
Of roses rede a chapelet.
But nightingales, a ful gret route,
That flyen over his heed aboute.
The starting place for myself, and many of those encountering this painting - I eavesdropped on a number of conversations - seems to be ornithology. Tom Crewe in The London Review of Books, in a very balanced review, pointed out that Burne-Jones was a wonderful painter of birds. Is that a Stonechat ahead of the Angel's left foot?
 |
| A bullfinch, probably |
A friend would later disagree and suggest a bullfinch, and the bird's beak suggested he was right. There is certainly a nightingale in front of the tree-stump. But is the flock above the Angel's head - following on from the poet's lines - those birds behaving in a most un-nightingale way. And all this distraction suddenly reveals a problem. You find yourself getting bogged down in detail and have to remind yourself to return to the whole before working your way inwards.
The composition is relatively simple. Two figures, one guiding the other, out of a thicket of brambles into a relatively tranquil landscape. The locking of the Pilgrim and the Angel's hands hints towards Michelangelo's ceiling.
 |
| The aim is Michelangelo, even if you fall short |
There is also stunning use of colour, particularly in the clothing. The blue on the Pilgrim's cloak is just wonderful. I also love the way that brambles snarl and dance around the Pilgrim's feet and hands - intricate and mesmerising - although nowhere near as complex and labyrinthine as in the Sleeping Beauty sequence found later in the exhibition. And the feet. As Tom Crewe also mentions, the artist is just wonderful at feet (indeed, on the adjacent wall was the spectacular painting The Golden Staircase with its eighteen pairs of beautifully drawn feet descending a stairwell). Here, the barely discernible flex of the Angel's left foot (see above) over the tree trunk is sumptuous.
 |
| Detail from The Golden Staircase (1880) |
Just when you think you are satisfied, though, and can exercise unequivocal praise, the painting crashes down to earth. It's the birds above the Angel's head that do it. Perhaps the effect is meant to lighten the whole, giving the Angel a weightlessness, one that hints towards celerity and speed. It fails though. Less is more would have been a more suitable strategy here, and there's no getting away from the fact that both figures, no matter how beautifully drawn, don't seem particularly fleet of foot.
And in those figures you find the biggest problem, the faces, often the main criticism of Burne-Jones' work. The faces are devoid of personality. They don't even hint at a real person. There's a blankness and passivity that at times is quite terrifying, the features empty, anonymous, as if you are gazing into an abyss. Perhaps that is what Burne-Jones is aiming for, a mysterious enigmatic quality? The trouble is, as Burne-Jones' contemporary Oscar Wilde knew all too well, enigmatic sphinxes often have no secrets worth knowing.
 |
| 'As vacant as an emoji' as one Radio 4 reviewer put it |
Yet despite all those problems, I still love this painting. Which means my strategy of honing in on just the one work has telescoped the problem rather than solved it. I made my way out, walking unhindered through the Sleeping Beauty brambles, and wondering if Jimmy Page strums his guitar whilst contemplating the Burne-Jones tapestries that he owns. And it strikes me that art that is flawed and problematic can be enjoyed just as much as art that is peerless. It can't all be Rembrandts and Raphaels, and besides, the flaws in lesser artists are often visible because of the aesthetic calibration that comes from the awe that you feel when you gaze at The Night Watch. Burne-Jones' paintings are fascinating and flawed, and that is an artistic legacy that is certainly worth paying attention to.
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