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Studies
for the Perseus Series
In
1875 the Conservative statesman Arthur Balfour (1848-1930)
visited the Grange, Burne-Jones's house in Fulham, and commissioned
a decorative scheme for the music room of his London home
4 Carlton Gardens. Between them artist and patron agreed on
the subject of the Perseus myth which was to be based on William
Morris's treatment of the legend in his narrative poem The
Doom of King Acrisius, published as part of The Earthly Paradise
(1868-70).
Ten
subjects were chosen, The Call of Perseus, Perseus and the
Graiae, The Arming of Perseus, The Finding of Medusa, The
Death of Medusa, The Birth of Pegasus and Chrysaor, The Rock
of Doom, The Doom Fulfilled, The Baleful Head, and Atlas turned
to Stone. Originally several of the designs, including Perseus
and the Graiae, were to be executed as gesso reliefs but at
a later stage this technique appears to have been confined
to Pegasus and Chrysaor, a panel intended to go above the
door.
Full
scale cartoons for all the subjects, in gouache, c.1875-1885,
are in Southampton Art Gallery, but only four of the final
oil versions were completed, Perseus and the Graiae, The Rock
of Doom, The Doom Fulfilled and The Baleful Head, and these
are now in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. For a full discussion
see Dr.K. Locher, Der Perseus-Zyklus von Edward Burne-Jones,
Stuttgart, 1973.
Three
scale drawings of the complete proposed scheme are in the
collection of the Tate Gallery, London, 1875-6, NO3456-3458.
From these drawings it can clearly be seen that Burne-Jones
envisaged a collaboration with William Morris who was to have
provided a foliate decorative background for the oil paintings
probably, as in the Green Dining Room, 1866, in the Victoria
& Albert Museum, London, incorporating work in low relief.
According to Georgiana Burne-Jones, in Memorials II, p.60,
the paintings were to have had a setting of "ornamental
raised plaster.. but finally this idea was given up".
The
uncompleted and evolving scheme developed slowly, two paintings,
The Rock of Doom and The Doom Fulfilled, were shown at the
Grosvenor Gallery in 1887 but in 1890 Burne-Jones recorded
taking up the series again "for the patient and kind
Arthur Balfour." Fortunately the two men had become firm
friends and Balfour had purchased the finest version of The
Wheel of Fortune which was shown at the Grosvenor Gallery
in 1883 (see 1 above).
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