Edward Burne-Jones
1833–1898 · Painter, stained-glass designer
Came up to Exeter in 1853 to read theology, found William Morris and Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur instead. Left without a degree to paint, and went on to design the stained glass that lights Christ Church Cathedral.
Edward Coley Burne Jones — the hyphen came later — arrived at Exeter College in 1853 as a Birmingham draper's son intending to take orders in the Church of England. He left, three years later, without a degree, as a painter. The decisive influence between those two states was William Morris, a fellow Exeter undergraduate in his first year, and through Morris a copy of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.
Exeter College, 1853–1856
Burne-Jones was born in Birmingham on 28 August 1833. His mother died within a week of his birth and he was raised by his father and the housekeeper. He attended Birmingham's King Edward VI grammar school and the Birmingham School of Art before coming up to Exeter to read theology.
What he and Morris found at Oxford was less the university itself than the city — its medieval buildings, its Anglo-Catholic high churches, and a shared library of books that included Tennyson, Ruskin's The Stones of Venice, and (above all) Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. Burne-Jones brought with him a group of his old Birmingham schoolfriends, then up at Pembroke; together with Morris they formed a self-styled "Brotherhood" — to historians, the Birmingham Set.
In January 1856 the Set began publishing the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, funded by Morris. The magazine led directly to its two editors becoming London-based painters. They had recruited Dante Gabriel Rossetti as a contributor; Rossetti became the older mentor; under his influence both Morris and Burne-Jones gave up their original careers. In February 1857, Rossetti wrote of them: "Their names are Morris and Jones. They have turned artists instead of taking up any other career to which the university generally leads, and both are men of real genius. Jones's designs are marvels of finish and imaginative detail, unequalled by anything unless perhaps Albert Dürer's finest works."
The Oxford Union Murals
In the autumn of 1857 Burne-Jones came back to Oxford to join Rossetti's scheme to decorate the walls of the new Union debating-hall with scenes from Malory. His contribution was Nimue Bringing Sir Peleus to Ettarde After Their Quarrel. None of the painters had mastered fresco; the pigments were applied to bare brickwork and began to peel before the work was finished. The full story is at the Oxford Union Murals. Whatever else can be said of the project, it brought Burne-Jones, Morris, Rossetti and Jane Burden into one room for a summer — and arguably set in motion most of what followed in late-Victorian visual art.
The Firm, and Christ Church glass
In April 1861, Burne-Jones became one of the seven founding partners of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. — "the Firm" — alongside Morris, Rossetti, Philip Webb, Ford Madox Brown, Charles Faulkner and Peter Paul Marshall. He went on to design ceramic tiles, jewellery, tapestries, mosaics, book illustrations and (most consequentially for Oxford) the figure cartoons for Morris & Co.'s stained glass. His windows are in churches across the United Kingdom, with further examples in the United States and Australia; among the most accessible to a casual Oxford visitor are those installed at Christ Church Cathedral.
Burne-Jones married Georgiana ("Georgie") MacDonald in June 1860; through her sisters he became the uncle-by-marriage of both the future Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and Rudyard Kipling.
After Oxford
He did not exhibit publicly for most of the 1870s, partly in reaction to hostile criticism of his early oils. He emerged in May 1877 at the opening of the Grosvenor Gallery with eight paintings — among them The Beguiling of Merlin, The Days of Creation and The Mirror of Venus — that made him, suddenly, the central painter of the new Aesthetic Movement. Oxford honoured him with an honorary degree in 1881 and an Honorary Fellowship of Exeter the following year. He was created a Baronet, against the protests of his socialist wife and the disgust of his friend Morris, on 3 May 1894. Morris died in October 1896; Burne-Jones followed in June 1898 at his Fulham home. His memorial service was held — at the intervention of the Prince of Wales — at Westminster Abbey, the first time an artist had been so honoured.
Sources: Wikipedia: Edward Burne-Jones · Wikipedia: Oxford Union murals
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