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A Peacock
Burne-Jones, Edward Coley - Enlarge image
A Peacock; Memorial tablet to Mrs. Laura Lyttleton.
- Object:
Memorial tablet
- Place of origin:
London, England (made)
- Date:
1886 (made)
- Artist/Maker:
Burne-Jones, Edward Coley (Sir), born 1833 - died 1898 (maker)
- Materials and Techniques:
oil and gilt gesso on wood
- Credit Line:
Given by Mrs J. W. Mackail, daughter of the artist
- Museum number:
P.85-1938
- Gallery location:
British Galleries, room 125g, case WE
Object Type
This is an unusual memorial tablet, quite unlike the majority designed and made before this date. It is a coloured copy of a plain white plaster tablet designed by Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) in memory of his close friend Laura Lyttleton (née Tennant), who died in childbirth in 1886 within the first year of her marriage. The original was installed in the church of St Andrew in Mells, Somerset. The coloured version was made for Burne-Jones's own house, The Grange, Fulham.
Subjects Depicted
Burne-Jones had been studying Byzantine art. The peacock was a symbol of the Resurrection in Greek culture of the Christian era.
People
Lady Georgiana Burne-Jones described this tablet in her biography of her husband thus: - 'Laura, the daughter of Sir Charles Tennant: in our house she so fascinated us all that we called her The Siren"". [Her memorial] is eight feet high" and an effigy of a peacock which is the symbol of the Resurrection standing upon a laurel tree - and the laurel grows out of the tomb and burst through the side of the tomb with a determination to go on living and refusing to be dead and below was a Latin inscription made by Dean Church one of the many who loved her.'
