Object Type
Artists have, for centuries, developed their drawing skills by sketching from antique sculpture. Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) made numerous sketches of classical and Italian Renaissance sculpture in this sketchbook. Five sketches depict sculptures in the British Museum and four have been identified as showing objects from the South Kensington Museum.
Places
Burne-Jones moved near this Museum at the end of 1864. He moved first to 41 Kensington Square and three years later to The Grange, North End Lane, Fulham where he lived until his death in 1898. The South Kensington Museum, where many sketches were made, is mentioned several times in the 'Memorials of Burne-Jones' (1904). He wrote about liking this Museum more than the British Museum and wrote about this Museum's tapestries and cast courts. Such references suggest that he was familiar with several aspects of the collections.
Materials & Making
Some of the sketches are in softer pencil than the last drawings in this sketchbook, drawn in hard pencil,. The sketch book is made of paper with unvaried thickness, known as wove paper, which has a roughly textured surface on which soft pencil works particularly well.
Physical description
Sketch book of 46 pages, containing studies of works of art including a bronze and part of a frieze and a metope in the British Museum, two sculptures by or after Pierino da Vinci, and part of a fresco by Andrea Mantegna
Place of Origin
London, England (made)
Date
1864-1870 (made)
Artist/maker
Burne-Jones, Edward Coley (Sir), born 1833 - died 1898 (maker)
Materials and Techniques
Pencil and red chalk on wove paper, in a volume quarter-bound in green leather, gold tooled, and canvas boards
Dimensions
Height: 18.2 cm, Width: 26.4 cm, Depth: 1.4 cm
Object history note
Drawn in London by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (born in Birmingham, 1833, died in London, 1898)
Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)
Lambert, Susan (ed.) Pattern & Design: Designs for the Decorative Arts 1480-1980 London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1983
The full text of the entry is as follows:
'4.2.a Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, A.R.A., R.W.S. (1833-1898)
Sketch-book containing studies of works of art including a bronze and part of a frieze and a metope in the British Museum, two sculptures by Pierino da Vinci in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and part of a fresco by Andrea Mantegna. 46 pages of white wove Whatman paper together with several unused sheets at the back, quarter bound in green leather, gold tooled, with canvas boards. After 1862.
Pencil and red chalk. Size of volume 18.4 x 26 cm
Given by Dr W.L. Hildburgh, F.S.A.
E.2-1955
[...]
The group was acquired in Florence in 1863. Burne-Jones's sketch-book is open at a study of it. He had little formal art training but he valued drawing from life and from sculpture highly. One of his students at the Great Ormond Street Working Men's College, where he taught from January 1859 to March 1861, recalled 'he left with his pupils a feeling that he was their fellow-worker as well as their master ... He encouraged them to draw sculptures in the British Museum'.10 Whereas his wife reminisced 'Sometimes, after a day in the studio, he would go for a change to the South Kensington Museum in the evening, either to draw or to look at books in the Reference Library'.11
Other sketch-books by Burne-Jones in the Museum include studies of the following sculptures from the Museum's collection: Donatello's 'The Lamentation over the dead Christ' (no.8442-1863), the twelve roundels 'The Labours of the Months' by Luca della Robbia (Nos. 7632-7643--1861), the bust of Giovanni Chellini by Antonio Rossellino (No.7671-1861), the plaque 'The Assumption of the Virgin' by Andrea della Robbia (No.6741-1860) and the northern German limewood reliefs of St Matthew and St Luke from a set of the Evangelists (Nos.4841-4844--1858). There are also studies of two 15th century South German tapestries entitled 'In Search after Trew' and 'The Buzzard' (Nos.4025-1856, 4509-1858).
SL
10 G. Burne-Jones, Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, 1904, 1, p.192
11 Ibid., 2, p.6'
Labels and date
British Galleries:
AN ARTIST'S SKETCHES IN THE MUSEUM
From about 1860 the Museum was actively collecting and displaying European Medieval and Renaissance decorative arts and sculpture. This small figure group was bought in 1863 for the South Kensington Museum and thought at the time to have been made in about 1550. In the 1860s the artist Edward Burne-Jones studied works of art in museum collections to improve his drawing skills. This is his sketch of the terracotta group, made on one of his visits to the Museum. [27/03/2003]
Categories
Drawings
Collection code
PDP
