STUDIES
for THE PERSEUS SERIES (1875-1890s).
SIR
EDWARD COLEY BURNE-JONES, Bt.
1833-1898
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.
