Hidden Burne-JonesWorks on Paper by Edward Burne-Jones from Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery
Published by GILES in association with Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery
Publish Date — April 2007 (UK and USA)
Dimensions — 96 pages, 265 x 215mm (8 3/8 x 10 3/8 in.), portrait
Illustrations — 26 colour and 37 b&w illustrations
Hardback price — UK£17.00/US$32.50
ISBN — 1-904832-30-X
ISBN — 978-1-904832-30-0
Book Details (pdf) — Hidden_Burne_Jones_ai.pdf
Sales Points
Provides a complete listing of the unique collection of over 1,100 drawings, watercolours, sketches, stained glass cartoons, prints and archive material at Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery
Highlights the connections between little-known drawings selected from the works on paper collection at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
Includes essays by Burne-Jones specialists John Christian, Elisa Korb, and Tessa Sidey, Curator of Drawings and Prints at Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery
About the Book
Hidden Burne-Jones is a major new volume which throws new light on the draughtsmanship of leading Pre-Raphaelite artist, Edward Burne-Jones, by studying Burne-Jones's development as an artist and image maker through his life-long commitment to drawing.
The volume includes three essays by leading Burne-Jones specialists. The first, by John Christian, presents new research on Burne-Jones's drawing technique and stylistic development, most clearly seen in works like The Fairy Family series (1857), The Annunciation (1857-61), An Idyll (1862), and Drapery Study of Lucretia for Chaucer’s ‘Legend of Good Women’ (1863). The second essay, by Elisa Korb, studies Burne-Jones’s depiction of the female form, his approach to using models, and the stylistic development of subjects such as the nude over the course of his career. The artist’s fascination with the female form is most strongly evoked in works like Female Nude: Three Studies (1865-66), Two Nude Female Studies for The Lament (1865), Lucretia (1867) and Composition Study for Charity (1867). The final essay, by Tessa Sidey, looks at Burne-Jones’s often uneasy relationship with his native city of Birmingham, and the work of major benefactors, especially local patrons J.R. Holliday and Charles Fairfax Murray, in helping to develop the Museum and Art Gallery’s internationally important holdings the artist’s work.
The volume illustrates 63 selected drawings and works on paper, which appear throughout the essays and the main exhibition presentation, nearly 30 of which are reproduced in colour. Each work is accompanied by an entry, which includes full specifications, provenance, inscriptions and an extended caption.
The Burne-Jones collection at Birmingham is in every sense an international public resource. It contains nearly 1,200 works, of which over a thousand are works on paper and related archive material. This volume includes a complete catalogue listing of all 1,137 drawings, watercolours, prints and archive material at Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, which forms the basis of a new on-line Burne-Jones Resource Site.
