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25b
ULYSSES AND THE GHOSTS
1878
SIR
EDWARD COLEY BURNE-JONES, Bt.
1833-1898
Pencil
on paper, laid on board, 115.5 x 115.5 (45.5 x 45.5).
Signed
and dated, E.B.J. 1878 (lower right on the central image)
Provenance:
Mrs.H.Drew; Mrs.D.Parrish by whom presented to Fulham Public
Library 1955.
Exhibited:
New Gallery, Exhibition of the Works of Sir Edward Burne-Jones,
1898/9 (218) as Drawing from Odyssey; Royal Commission, Rome,
International Fine Arts Exhibition, 1911; Fulham 1967 (16).
Literature:
Pre-Raphaelite Drawings by Burne-Jones, Dover 1981,
reproduced, as Ulysses in Hades, p.34, from a platinum print
made by Frederick Hollyer (see 14 below).
The
illustration is placed within an over-all design in the shape
of an Italian renaissance altar-piece, a conceit it shares
with the Troy Triptych begun in 1870. There are columns
to each side with foliate decoration and flowers, of a type
associated with William Morris, where the altar frontal would
normally be. Across these flowers runs a straight-edged scroll
bearing an inscription in Greek. The illustration is set above
the scroll in an architectural setting with stylised flowers
on each side and a dolphin and flower-vase frieze above.
In
the central image Ulysses sits on a rock, at the left, before
two spear carriers, flames rise from the ground before him.
Teiresias, bearded and heavily cloaked, stands at the right,
leaning on a long rod and looking towards Ulysses, armed soldiers
stand behind him to his right. Classically inspired young
women and children occupy the centre and left background,
standing before a ridge of barren rocks.
Also
titled Apparition of the Departed Souls, the drawing
is an illustration to Book XI, lines 37-40 of the Odyssey
which form the inscription on the drawing; "And now the
souls of the buried dead/ Came swarming up from Erebus-/ Brides
to be, unmarried youths, old men/ Who had borne so much, and
tender maidens/ Who held still fresh the grief in their hearts."
(Translation by Philip Jones).
The
figure of a boy, centre-right wearing a loin-cloth, appears
to be derived from an Italian renaissance St. Sebastian and
the background rocks are Burne-Jones's regular depiction of
Hellish landscape, first seen in the Cupid and Psyche
paintings of the mid-1860s and later used in the Perseus
series of 1875-85.
The
vigorously drawn flowers, which fill the foreground, are noticeably
similar to those for a proposed book cover for Ruskin's Munera
Pulveris (c.1864) which was adapted later for the cover
for Studies in Both Arts, by Ruskin, published in 1895.
This
drawing is possibly a cartoon for an embroidery, certainly
the format, with its long inscription and many flowers, would
have lent itself to the medium. Burne-Jones and Morris had
collaborated on the Romance of the Rose embroidered
frieze for Rounton Grange in 1874-6 and also provided designs
for embroidery for the Royal School of Art Needlework in the
1870s. In 1876 he made five designs from The Song of Solomon,
intended for both paintings and for outline embroidery, one
of these The Song of Solomon c.1876 (35 x 20.3), in
Birmingham City Art Gallery, bears several stylistic and compositional
resemblances, including a floral border and integral inscription,
to Ulysses and the Ghosts.
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