The Garden Of Pan

Title

The Garden Of Pan

Artist

Eric Glaser

Medium

Painting - Oil On Canvas

Description

"The Garden of Pan"

Artist: Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt., A.R.A., R.W.S. (1833-1898)

Title: The Garden of Pan

Date: 1887

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Dimensions: Height: 1,525 mm (60.03 in); Width: 1,869 mm (73.58 in)

Collection: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

Painting History: Exhibited Grosvenor Gallery, London, 1887; collection of Lillian, Duchess of Marlborough, by 1892–1918; included in her sale, Christie's London, 10 May 1918, no. 95; from where purchased, on the advice of Robert Ross, for the Felton Bequest, 1918.

Inscriptions: Signature and date bottom right: EB-J 1886-7

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet, ARA was a British artist and designer associated with the phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked with William Morris on decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.

Burne-Jones was involved in the rejuvenation of the tradition of stained glass art in Britain; his works include windows in St. Philip's Cathedral, Birmingham, St Martin in the Bull Ring, Birmingham, Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Square, Chelsea, St Peter and St Paul parish church in Cromer, St Martin's Church in Brampton, Cumbria, St Michael's Church, Brighton, Trinity Church in Frome, All Saints, Jesus Lane, Cambridge, St Edmund Hall and Christ Church, two colleges of the University of Oxford. His stained glass works also feature in St. Anne's Church, Brown Edge, Staffordshire Moorlands and St. Edward the Confessor church at Cheddleton Staffordshire. Burne-Jones's early paintings show the inspiration of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, but by the 1860s Burne-Jones was discovering his own artistic "voice".

In 1877, he was persuaded to show eight oil paintings at the Grosvenor Gallery. These included The Beguiling of Merlin.

This painting was conceived at a time when Burne-Jones was deeply influenced by his travels in Italy. Returning home to London in 1872, he was inspired to set out a program of ambitious new works. Writing in 1904, his widow, Georgiana Burne-Jones, described how the painting had its origins in one such scheme: ‘[it] is a fulfilment of part of Edward's intention to paint the Beginning of the World. He first called it "The Youth of Pan" ' (G. Bume-Jones, Memorials of Edward, Burne-Jones (1904), vol. II, London, 1993, p. 174).

The artist’s original idea was more complex and grand in scale than this painting would suggest. He initially planned to include 'the beginning of the world, with Pan and Echo and sylvan gods, and a forest full of centaurs, and a wild background of woods, mountains, and rivers'. (G. Bume-Jones, Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones (1904), vol. I, London, 1993, p. 308). In the finished work there are just three figures in a twilight setting. The image is coloured by the artist's love of the Italian Renaissance. Although Burne-Jones did not travel to Italy after 1872, he saw numerous Renaissance pictures in public and private collections in Britain.

Burne-Jones's interest in the Renaissance was not only visual, however, for he was also a scholar of literature and mythography. During the 1860s and 1870s both he and Morris became interested in the transformation of stories that had filtered down from Persian and Greek sources to reappear in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The deity Pan was the type of migratory figure that appealed to these artists. Pan had appeared in various forms throughout the centuries, ranging from 'the good shepherd' to demonic goat-legged creatures.

In this image, Pan is a beautiful, slender youth; as he plays, the kingfisher and dragonflies — creatures known for their darting speed — stop to listen to the sweet sound. Another characteristic of Burne-Jones's work is his inclusion of elements such as doorways, rock portals or water, which act as boundaries between different states of being. In this painting a bend in the river divides the young god from his listeners, separating the natural and supernatural worlds.

Text by Jennifer Long from European Masterpieces: six centuries of paintings from the National Gallery of Victoria, Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2000, p. 168.

Text Credit: Google Arts & Culture

This is a Google Art Project image, thank you Google!

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Additional image editing by Eric Glaser

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October 16th, 2020

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