EDWARD BURNE-JONES. Le rayonnement international d’un artiste anglais à l’aube du XXe siècle

A sell-taught painter, Burne-Jones began his career relatively late, while the other Pre-Raphaelites were already in the spotlight in the English artistic world. His very personal style of art developed in a social, political and economic context that must be understood in order to appreciate the so-called “primitive ” schools as part of the history of style. While Paris was priding itself on its great works of urbanism that were nearing completion, Victorian London of the 1870s still resembles the novels of Dickens. Burne-Jones, rejecting genre painting and the dark backgrounds of his contemporaries’ historical painting, drew the inspiration for his original work from biblical, mythological and literary sources. Working meticulously and with determination, he managed to go beyond the limits inherent in the moral intentions of other artists’ creations. Convinced that there was no separation between the minor arts and great art, he applied the same care to the studies he made for works designed for different supports : canvass, stained glass, sculpture, tapestry, etc.As a thread that linked the hieratic work of his early years to those more harmonious works of his later career, the poetry that emanates from them is that of an extremely personal style. His influence can be seen in the smooth lines and ornamental of elements of Art Nouveau, as well as in the aesthetics of International Symbolism up until the dawn of the 20th century.