The New Student's Reference Work/Burne-Jones, Sir Edward C.

Burne-Jones, Sir Edward C., a notable English painter, much admired in his day as a fine colorist, and clever also as an artistic stained-glass designer. Born at Birmingham in 1833 and educated at King Edward's School there, he entered Exeter College, Oxford, in his twentieth year, but shortly afterwards withdrew to study art under the influence of Dante G. Rossetti. Settling in London, he drew much from real life both in water-colors and in oil, his pictures possessing much brilliancy as well as purity of hue. He is classed among the Pre-Raphaelites, but himself free from the whilom extravagances of that school of art. In 1881 Burne-Jones received from Oxford the honorary degree of D.C.L., and in 1885 was elected President of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists and made an Associate of the Royal Academy of Arts, London. The latter he resigned in 1893 when he became one of the founders of the New Gallery, where and at the Grosvenor Gallery, in the British metropolis, most of his pictures were first exhibited. In 1894 the artist was made a baronet, elected an honorary Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, and was decorated with the French Legion of Honor. At an early period in his career he came under the influence of Ruskin; while, besides his varied and magnificent work as a painter, he did much as a designer of mosaics for church windows, at Oxford and elsewhere in Eng-and, as well as for the apse of the American Church at Rome. Among his best known oil paintings are King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, The Resurrection, The Annunciation, The Golden Stair, Merlin and Vivien, Pygmalion and the Image. His principal water-colors include The Days of Creation, The Wine of Circe and the series known as Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, Day and Night. Sir Edward Burne-Jones died in London in 1898.