First published 1997
Penelope Fitzgerald traces the life of Edward Burne-Jones from his lonely childhood in Birmingham to his fame as a Victorian artist. The son of an unsuccessful picture-framer, Burne-Jones discovered his calling at Oxford alongside William Morris under the influence of Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites. In 1860 he married nineteen-year-old Georgiana Macdonald, who remained devoted through his bouts of illness and romantic fascinations with younger women. Fitzgerald reveals a man torn between artistic ambition and domestic life, adoring his daughter Margaret while struggling to understand his troubled son Phil. Beyond his celebrated painting King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid and his stained glass designs for Morris and Co., Burne-Jones emerges as a witty caricaturist and beloved friend to figures like Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and his famous nephews by marriage, Stanley Baldwin and Rudyard Kipling. Fitzgerald shows how this sympathetic and humorous man navigated the tensions between his art and his relationships.
Genres: biography, art, 20th-century, biography-memoir, 19th-century, art-history
Vibes: emotional-atmospheric, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: artist-life, family-drama
Setting: Birmingham, Oxford
Period: Victorian Era
Paperback · Sutton Pub Ltd