Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris in 1874. Print by Frederick Hollyer. From the Victoria and Albert Museum collection, London.
Georgiana MacDonald, later Burne-Jones. Painting by Sir Edward Burne-Jones.
Stained-glass window of David's Charge to Soloman. Designed by Edward Burne-Jones and executed by the William Morris Company. At Trinity Church in Boston.
Early Life | Association with PRB | Decorative Arts
Edward Jones was born in Birmingham in 1833. His father, also Edward, ran a carving and frame shop there. His mother, Elizabeth Coley, was the daughter of a prosperous jewelry designer. Elizabeth Coley died six days after Edward's birth, a fact his father blamed him for - he did not touch his own son until he was four years old. However, did introduce his son to poetry, which would remain one of Edward Jones's greatest passions. As a teenager, he was very gifted in drawing and attended a government school of design three nights a week.
In 1853, he went to Exeter College, Oxford, where he intended to study theology. There, he met William Morris, who became a lifelong friend. Morris was also at Oxford to study theology, but after the two went on a tour of French cathedrals, Burne-Jones, as he now called himself decided to become a painter and Morris an architect.
At Oxford, Burne-Jones became part of a group of admirers of Arthurian legend, in particular, Sir Thomas Malory’s book La Morte d’Arthur. This work would continue to be his lifelong inspiration. In 1857, the group was commissioned to decorate the Oxford Union Debating Hall with scenes from the poem. Burne-Jones’ contribution was a mural of the wizard Merlin trapped under a stone by the Lady of the Lake.
Association with the Pre-Raphaelites
Around this time, he and Morris became familiar with and interested in the Pre-Raphaelites. Burne-Jones met Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1856 and persuaded him to accept him as a student, and both he and Morris left Oxford without graduating to become full-time artists.
Burne-Jones's early paintings were watercolors in the style of Rossetti, but after two trips to Italy in 1859 and 1862, he developed his own personal style, which was a fusion of Pre-Raphaelite and classical themes. His paintings began to show a greater concern for design and surface pattern than for subject or narrative. Also around this time, he, Morris and a small group of designers and decorators formed Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., a decorating company that produced wallpaper, tapestries, carpets, furniture and stained-glass and became very popular during the late Victorian Aesthetic movement.
In 1860, he married Georgiana MacDonald, one of the famous MacDonald sisters. Another of Georgiana's sisters married the artist Edward Poynter, a third became the mother of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, and a fourth became the mother of Rudyard Kipling. Burne-Jones and Georgiana had one son, Philip, who became a minor painter, and a daughter, Margaret. They settled in Fulham in 1867.
Burne-Jones did not exhibit for much of the 1870s, due to his affair with Maria Zambaco, a Greek model who tried to commit suicide in public after their affair ended. However, in 1877, he was persuaded to show 8 oil paintings at the opening of the Grosvenor Gallery. Among these were The Beguiling of Merlin, one of his most famous works.
This made him famous again, and he became known as one of the most influential members of the Aesthetic movement and Art Nouveau style. His works began to be more and more decorative. Often, he would re-use many of his designs for tapestries and stained glass and turn them into paintings, rather than vice-versa. He even designed pianos, and costumes and backdrops for theater productions. His work inspired poetry by Algernon Charles Swinburne, who dedicated his 1886 Poems and Ballads to the artist, and he also influenced the French symbolist painters.
In 1881, Burne-Jones received an honorary degree from Oxford, and became a fellow in 1883. In 1885, he became president of the Birmingham Arts Society. In 1890, he was elected to Royal Academy, but he resigned three years later, and in 1894, he was knighted.
He died in 1898.
(Information compiled from Wikipedia, ArtMagick & Whistler Society).