Place of Origin
Great Britain, United Kingdom (painted)
Date
1870 (painted)
Artist/maker
Burne-Jones, Edward Coley (Sir), born 1833 - died 1898 (painter (artist))
Materials and Techniques
oil on canvas
Marks and inscriptions
'E B-J 1870'
Dimensions
Height: 90.8 cm, Width: 197.5 cm, Height: 124 cm frame, Width: 232 cm frame, Weight: 88 kg with frame
Object history note
Burne-Jones was acquainted with the Ionides family by 1869 and the Mill was commissioned by Constantine Alexander Ionides. The three female models, also related to the family, were Aglaia Ionides, Marie Spartali, and Maria Zambaco (Burne-Jones was moreover involved with the latter). An undated letter from Burne-Jones at the NAL (86.WW.1) informed Constantine Alexander that the picture was nearly ready. According to his collection's inventory (private collection) Ionides paid £905 for the Mill on 21 April 1882.
Bequeathed by Constantine Alexander Ionides, 1900.
Descriptive line
Oil painting, 'The Mill - Girls Dancing to Music by a River', Edward Burne-Jones, 1870
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
100 Great Paintings in The Victoria & Albert Museum. London: V&A, 1985, p.170
The following is the full text of the entry:
"Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bart., R.W.S. 1833-1898
British School
THE MILL, 1870-1882
Signed E B-J 1870 on the building on the right
Oil on canvas, 90.8 x 97.5 cm
CAI.8. Ionides Bequest.
This work was commissioned by Constantine Ionides in 1870, and in Ion, the history and reminiscences of the Ionides family, published by his son Alexander Constantine Ionides in 1927, it is indicated that the three dancing women are portraits of Marie Spartali (in profile to the right), Mary Zambaco and Aglaia Coronio, known as the Three Graces. Aglaia was Constantine's sister, Marie Spartali (Mrs W J Stillman), whom the artist considered the most beautiful of the Greek community surrounding the Ionides, and was also his 'model' for the painting 'Dance' (1870), and Mary Zambaco, the grand-daughter of Constantine, whose exotic looks and her misfortune caused Bume-Jones to fall in love with her. He embodied his distress caused by this attachment in the painting 'Phyllis and Demophoon' (1870), to which he gave the epigraph 'Dic mihi quod feci? Nisi non sapienter amavi' (Tell me, what have I done? Except that I have not loved wisely).
'The Mill' however, which he took twelve years to complete has that calm, dreamlike quality characteristic of many of the artist's works. The Times' critic commented when it was first exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1882, ' ... it reflects its truth only from certain mental states'. Bume-Jones admitted that the painting made a deliberate reference, to be understood by 'the few people I care for' to his Italian masters, to the 'Primavera' and to the bathing figures in Piero's 'Baptism'. The mill pool, as Ion suggests, may be a recollection of the mill race at Alberga, or of the three mills near Oxford within a mile of each other at Milton, Steventon and Sutton Courtney.
David Cecil, comparing Bume-Jones and Samuel Palmer in his Visionary and Dreamer, London, 1969, writes that '"The Mill" lacks both the strangeness and immediacy of a vision. Rather it seems to depict a pensive daydream deliberately evoked ... For his life is an illustration of ... the predicament in which an imaginative painter found himself if he had the bad luck to be born in the 19th century'.
A wall tapestry after the painting, illustrated in the Art Journal, 1910, worked on linen in crewels by the Royal School of Art Needlework, omits the bathing figures in the background.
Jean Hamilton"
Vikutoria & Arub?to Bijutsukan-z? : eikoku romanshugi kaigaten = The Romantic tradition in British painting, 1800-1950 : masterpieces from the Victoria and Albert Museum / selected by Mark Evans [Japan : Brain Trust], 2002. 185 p. : ill. (chiefly col.) ; 30 cm.
Exhibition History
The Romantic Tradition in British Painting 1800-1950: Masterpieces from the Victoria and Albert Museum (Prefectural Museum of Art, Hyogo, Kobe, Japan 28/01/2003-06/04/2003)
The Romantic Tradition in British Painting 1800-1950: Masterpieces from the Victoria and Albert Museum (Koriyama City Museum of Art 22/11/2002-27/12/2002)
The Romantic Tradition in British Painting 1800-1950: Masterpieces from the Victoria and Albert Museum (Matsuzakaya Museum, Nagoya, Japan 19/10/2002-11/11/2002)
The Romantic Tradition in British Painting 1800-1950: Masterpieces from the Victoria and Albert Museum (Chiba Prefectural Museum of Art, Japan 24/08/2002-06/10/2002)
Ruskin, Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites (Tate 09/03/2000-28/05/2000)
Burne-Jones Centenary (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery 17/10/1998-17/01/1999)
Burne-Jones Centenary (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 01/06/1998-06/09/1998)
Materials
Oil paint; Canvas
Techniques
Oil painting
Subjects depicted
Water mills
Categories
Architecture; Paintings; Music
Collection code
PDP
