Pre Raphaelite Art

Short Break

2012-02-02T06:00:00.000Z

I wish - its cold here. I have some medical problems to sort out and need a hopefully short break. I can still be found on Facebook as I find that easier to use but will be away from here for a few weeks. Thanks for all your support. Back when I can.

19th Century stage star Ellen Terry: in 1923 silent film and 1911 recording of "Quality Of Mercy"

2012-02-01T17:00:00.000Z

Endymion on Latmos 1863

2012-02-01T13:00:00.000Z

This wood-engraving illustrates the story of the mythological shepherd boy, Endymion. The illustration appeared in the periodical 'Once a Week' (3 January 1863, p. 42).

The Story of St George - the Return of the Princess

2012-02-01T06:00:00.001Z

This work is part of a set of four drawings attributed to Rosa Corder after stained glass windows by Dante Gabriel Rossetti . The head of St George is said to have been modelled on Charles Augustus Howell (1840-90), a rather controversial associate of the Pre-Raphaelites. Corder was an associate and mistress of Howell from 1873, she is considered by many to have been a forger of Rossetti drawings.

http://www.preraphaelites.org/the-collection/1905p205/the-story-of-st-george-the-return-of-the-princess/

Anna Blunden - Venice

2012-02-01T06:00:00.000Z

http://www.antiques.co.uk/antique/VENICE-WATERCOLOUR-BY-ANNA-BLUNDEN-C1874-46

Herbert James Draper - Portrait Of Miss Barbara De Selinco

2012-01-31T13:00:00.000Z

Herbert James Draper - A young girl by a pool

2012-01-31T06:00:00.001Z

Was Herbert James Draper a late pre raphaelite ?

2012-01-31T06:00:00.000Z

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/speel/paint/draper.htm

The Lady Lever Art Gallery

2012-01-30T13:00:00.001Z

http://adrianjbeamish.blogspot.com/2011/01/lady-lever-art-gallery-part-1.html

There seems to be no part 2
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/picture-of-month/displaypicture.asp?venue=7&id=105

Edward Burne-Jones - Head Of A Girl, Possibly Maria Zambaco

2012-01-30T13:00:00.000Z

Edward Burne-Jones - Study of Edward Horner, for 'The Prioress's Tale'

2012-01-30T06:00:00.001Z

Edward Burne-Jones - Flower Book

2012-01-30T06:00:00.000Z

Facebook

2012-01-29T17:25:00.003Z

Its easier for me to work on Facebook and readers here might enjoy my new groups

Ned Burne-Jones and his life and Art

https://www.facebook.com/groups/287932114591786/

Women Pre Raphaelite Artists

https://www.facebook.com/groups/287284131334748/

though for non FB users I will keep this blog going, though I do far more posts on FB.

Julia Cameron appreciation group

https://www.facebook.com/groups/101886959935735/

and

Women Impressionists

https://www.facebook.com/groups/312856488751004/

Edward Burne-Jones - Woman in a Classical Robe (1862)

2012-01-29T13:00:00.000Z

Coloured chalks on paper
Signed with initials and dated 1862

Edward Burne-Jones - Study of robed seated figure (c.1866)

2012-01-29T06:00:00.002Z

Pencil and coloured chalks
Signed with initials

Edward Burne-Jones - A Knight and his Lady

2012-01-29T06:00:00.000Z

Watercolour and bodycolour on vellum
Signed with initials, inscribed and dated EBJ London Feb 1859

George Frederic Watts - Study for 'The Court of Death' c.1868–1870

2012-01-28T13:00:00.000Z

Hubert von Herkomer - George Frederic Watts

2012-01-28T06:00:00.001Z

William Holman Hunt - Little Nell and Her Grandfather 1845

2012-01-28T06:00:00.000Z

Shedding light on an obscure pre-Raphaelite

2012-01-27T17:00:00.000Z

http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/Shedding-light-on-an-obscure-pre-Raphaelite/25508

The Letters of Christina Rossetti: 1874-1881 (Letters of Christina Rossetti) (Hardcover)

2012-01-27T13:00:00.000Z

http://www.tower.com/letters-christina-rossetti-1874-1881-antony-h-harrison-hardcover/wapi/100774939

Edward Burne-Jones - Correspondence with Violet Maxse

2012-01-27T06:00:00.003Z

http://davidbrassrarebooks.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-shopping-cart/single_book.php?sbook=789

Max Beerbohm's "Rossetti and His Circle"

2012-01-27T06:00:00.001Z

http://www.davidbrassrarebooks.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-shopping-cart/single_book.php?sbook=585

Sketching from Nature

2012-01-26T17:00:00.002Z

http://www.cartoonstock.com/vintage/directory/v/victorian_hobbies.asp

Edward Burne-Jones - The Tree of Jesse

2012-01-26T17:00:00.001Z

1860 – 1861

This is a stained glass design for the east window of Waltham Abbey executed by James Powell & Sons in 1861. A version of the central panel was exhibited in the International Exhibition in 1862, and is now also in Birmingham's collection (1977M1).Each figure is identified by the artist. The left window, from bottom to top are: Adam (holding fruit, with serpent to his left), Noah (holding a small ark; name spelled 'Noea' or 'Noeh'); Jacob (holding a ladder); Gideon (holding fleece); Joshua (in armour holding the sun and moon); Samson (with flowing tresses); and Moses (unlabelled by the artist, but holding the 2 stone tablets of the Ten Commandments). Middle window, with the actual Tree of Jesse features (from bottom to top): the four animorphic symbols of the Evangelists with scrolls around them quoting the first lines of their respective Gospels (the man's scroll, St. Matthew, reads 'Generations of Jesus Christ of the book of'; above him is the eagle of St. John, whose Gospel begins 'In the beginning was the Word'; opposite is the ox of St. Luke, with 'There was in the days of Herod'; the lion is St. Mark, with 'The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.). These creatures flank the sleeping body of Jesse, from which the tree springs. The first branch holds (from left to right): Achaz (kneeling in front of an altar with a statue); Solomon (holding the Temple); David (playing a lyre); Roboam (or Roboham, stringing a bow). The next branch supports: Hezekiah (the king, holding a sundial [?]; Manassas (inprisoned and in chains); Josias (the king, holding tablets [?]; Jecunias (bound and chained). The third branch shows two roundels recounting the birth of Christ, with the Nativity scene on the left and the adoration of the shepherds on the right. At the top of the tree is Jesus crucified to it, with his mother and Mary Magdalene flanking it, in mourning. The right panel is incomplete, and features the ancient Hebrew prophets with symbols associated with them, they are (from bottom to top): Esaias (or Isaiah); Jeremias (Jeremiah); Ezekiel (with the eyes of the seraphim in wheels behind him); Daniel (with a lion sleeping at his feet); Malachai and a rough sketch in pencil of Micah that is unfinished. A t the very top is John the Baptist, outlined in pen.

Edward Burne-Jones - The Tomb of Tristram and Iseult

2012-01-26T17:00:00.000Z

1862

This is one of a series of thirteen stained glass designs illustrating the Story of Tristram and Iseult as told in Malory's 'Morte d'Arthur'. Walter Dunlop of Bradford commissioned the windows for his music room at Harden Grange, near Bingley, Yorkshire. They were made by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company in 1862. The windows are now in the collection of Bradford City Art Gallery.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Head of a young Child

2012-01-26T13:00:00.002Z

http://www.preraphaelites.org/the-collection/1904P376/head-of-a-young-child/

Ford Madox Brown - Parisina's Sleep - Study for Head of Parisina

2012-01-26T13:00:00.000Z

This is one of three studies in the Birmingham collection for the painting 'Parisina's Sleep' (now lost). They were made in 1842 when Brown was living in Paris. The picture was based on a poem of the same name by Byron which tells the tale of Prince Azo who executed his wife, Parisina, after discovering her adulterous affair with his illegitimate son, Hugo. The scene Brown chose to depict is the one in which Prince Azo first hears Parisina talk of Hugo in her sleep. In his rage he contemplates murdering her. The painting was rejected from the Paris Salon ion 1843 but it was exhibited at the British Institution two years later where it received some admiration. This study is for the head of Parisina. Although Brown studied in Belgium and lived in Paris he insisted in his 1865 one-man exhibition that the painting was inspired by the works of the Spanish masters and Rembrandt which he saw on numerous visits to the Louvre (Ford Madox Brown, 'The Exhibition of Work and other Paintings,' 1865, p. 17). This study gives a glimpse of these influences in the touches of white chalk adding dramatic lighting to the scene. LM

http://www.preraphaelites.org/the-collection/1906P717/parisinas-sleep-study-for-head-of-parisina/

John Everett Millais - Sketch of Horses at Dinan, France

2012-01-26T06:00:00.001Z

http://www.preraphaelites.org/the-collection/1926P80/sketch-of-horses-at-dinan-france/

John Ruskin - Dumbarton Castle

2012-01-26T06:00:00.000Z

In 1838 Ruskin toured Scotland with his parents. The use of strong blue and yellow in this work reflects the influence of David Cox on the young Ruskin. The catalogue of drawings produced by E. T. Cook and A. Wedderburn dates this work to 30 July 1838 (Works of Ruskin, XXXVIII, Catalogue of Drawings, p. 248).
http://www.preraphaelites.org/the-collection/1907P167/dumbarton-castle/

Edward Burne-Jones - Margaret Burne-Jones,

2012-01-25T13:00:00.000Z

http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/bj/paintings/4.html

Edward Burne-Jones - Margaret Burne-Jones

2012-01-25T06:00:00.002Z

http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/bj/paintings/4.html

Edward Burne-Jones - Lady Frances Balfour

2012-01-25T06:00:00.001Z

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Wbalfour.htm

Simeon Solomon - A Design for a Motif from Parsifal (1894)

2012-01-24T13:00:00.000Z

http://www.leicestergalleries.com/19th-20th-century-paintings/d/simeon-solomon/13799

Walter Crane: The Arts and Crafts, Painting and Politics, 1875-1890

2012-01-24T11:30:00.004Z

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0300167687/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d0_g14_i5?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=center-3&pf_rd_r=04MNQY2F6XRF8EJH7F9M&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=467128473&pf_rd_i=468294

John Byam Liston Shaw - "Hist" - said Kate The Queen (1897)

2012-01-24T06:00:00.002Z

http://www.leicestergalleries.com/19th-20th-century-paintings/d/john-byam-liston-shaw/15188

Edward Burne-Jones - Self-Caricature by an Easel (c.1867)

2012-01-24T06:00:00.001Z

Pencil on an envelope

Maria Zambaco, by descent to her great-niece

A date in the mid or late 1860's is likely for this drawing as the composition of the picture on the easel is similar to that of Fair Rosamund, a watercolour of 1863.

http://www.leicestergalleries.com/19th-20th-century-paintings/d/edward-coley-burne-jones/12610

Marie Spartali Stillman - Dante and Beatrice, 1880

2012-01-23T13:00:00.000Z

Marie Spartali Stillman - "By a Clear Well with a Little Field", 1883

2012-01-23T06:00:00.002Z

Marie Spartali Stillman - Woman Reading in a Garden

2012-01-23T06:00:00.001Z

Edward Burne-Jones - Dragon's Home, 18th December, 1892

2012-01-22T13:00:00.001Z

The Flower Book: WW. Star of Bethlehem, 1905

2012-01-22T13:00:00.000Z

Edward Burne-Jones - The passing of Arthur, 1894

2012-01-22T06:00:00.001Z

Edward Burne-Jones - Poet Muse - piano lid paper

2012-01-22T06:00:00.000Z

John William Waterhouse - Maidens Picking Flowers by a Stream (study) - 1911

2012-01-21T13:00:00.000Z

http://www.jwwaterhouse.com/view.cfm?recordid=105

John William Waterhouse - Tristan and Isolde Sharing the Potion - 1916

2012-01-21T06:00:00.001Z

http://www.jwwaterhouse.com/view.cfm?recordid=113

John William Waterhouse - Miss Betty Pollock - 1911

2012-01-21T06:00:00.000Z

http://www.jwwaterhouse.com/view.cfm?recordid=101

Another still from Effie

2012-01-20T18:37:00.001Z

New still from the forth coming film Effie
Now due for release this June
Still shows Claudia Cardinale, Dakota Fanning (with fabulous costumes)
Julia Walters plays Margaret Ruskin and the cast list includes Derek Jacobi, Robbie Coltrane and David Suchet.

Pre-Raphaelites Exhibition London coming up

2012-01-20T18:36:00.001Z

http://www.viewlondon.co.uk/whatson/pre-raphaelites-exhibition-london-article-10622.html

John William Waterhouse - Destiny 1900

2012-01-20T13:00:00.000Z

http://www.jwwaterhouse.com/view.cfm?recordid=15

Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde

2012-01-20T10:37:00.002Z

12 September 2012 – 13 January 2013
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/preraphaelites/default.shtm

John William Waterhouse - Gathering Summer Flowers in a Devonshire Garden - 1893

2012-01-20T06:00:00.002Z

http://www.jwwaterhouse.com/view.cfm?recordid=59

John William Waterhouse - Gathering Flowers

2012-01-20T06:00:00.001Z

Edward Burne-Jones - Study of a tree for 'Arthur in Avalon', with a subsidiary study of fruit on a branch

2012-01-19T13:00:00.000Z

Study of a tree for 'Arthur in Avalon', with a subsidiary study of fruit on a branch
inscribed 'Smooth trunk 6 feet to/first branch' (lower left)
pencil, watermarked 'MICHALLET'
23¼ x 17 in. (59 x 43.2 cm.); and two studies for the writing beneath 'Arthur in Avalon' from the studio of Burne-Jones
http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/sir-edward-coley-burne-jones-bt-ara-rws/2067836/lot/lot_details.aspx?from=searchresults&pos=2&intObjectID=2067836&sid=30dbe38a-93c8-46b1-bc69-be70266bd3dd&page=4

Edward Burne-Jones - Orpheus and Eurydice

2012-01-19T06:00:00.001Z

signed with initials 'EBJ' (lower left), with inscription 'Orpheus and Eurydice/by/E.Burne-Jones' and 'No. 323/by E Burne-Jones ARA/Edmund Oldfield Esq./19 Thurloe Square/...' (on two old labels attached to the reverse of the frame)
pencil, bodycolour and gold, with gum arabic, on a prepared ground, painted circle
9¼ x 8¾ in. (23.6 x 22.3 cm.)

The son of Apollo and the muse Calliope, Orpheus was a Thracian poet who played the lyre so skilfully that even wild beasts were entranced. He married Eurydice, a wood nymph, but the marriage was not blessed with happiness. Bitten by a snake as she fled the advances of a lusty shepherd, Eurydice died, and Orpheus determined to seek her in Hades. He pleaded with Pluto and Proserpine, the deities of the underworld, for her release, accompanying his words with strains on the lyre so sweet that all who heard shed tears. The gods relented and allowed Eurydice to follow her husband on condition that he did not look back during their journey. The temptation, however, was too great; just as they were reaching the upper world, Orpheus turned to look at Eurydice and she was snatched back into the shades.

Inconsolable at his second loss, Orpheus shunned female company and thereby excited the fury of the Thracian women as they celebrated the orgies of Bacchus. Tearing him limb from limb, they threw his head into the river Hebrus, where it continued to lament Eurydice as it floated down to the Aegean sea. The couple were finally united in Hades, and Jupiter placed Orpheus' lyre among the stars.

The subject appealed strongly to artists of the Symbolist period, who saw the head of Orpheus still singing after death as an image of the immortality of art. In France the theme inspired a famous painting by Gustave Moreau, exhibited at the Salon of 1866 (Musée d'Orsay); and it was subsquently treated by Puvis de Chavannes, Odilon Redon and others. In England its exponents included G.F. Watts, Burne-Jones, J.W. Waterhouse and Charles Ricketts.

It was typical of Burne-Jones's fertility of imagination that he made a long series of designs, illustrating every aspect of the story. They date from the early 1870s and are roundel in form, the artist clearly relishing the challenge this posed. Two distinct versions exist: a set of ten highly-finished pencil drawings (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) and a number of more loosely handled designs in brown monochrome gouache. The present drawing and lot 25 belong to the latter category, of which there are further examples in the Tate Gallery and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Though so different in treatment, both sets of drawings betray the strong Italian influence that is characteristic of Burne-Jones's work at this period. He made his last visits to Italy in 1871 and 1873, studying Mantegna, Botticelli, Michelangelo and other masters intently.

The story of Orpheus obviously lent itself to the decoration of a musical instrument, and Burne-Jones did in fact adapt the ten pencil drawings when painting the so-called 'Graham' or 'Orpheus' piano in 1879-80. This famous instrument (private collection) was commissioned by his great patron William Graham as a twenty-first birthday present for his daughter Frances, herself one of the artist's most intimate friends. Made by the firm of Broadwood, the piano was both designed and decorated by Burne-Jones, whose idea was to replace the curves and bulges of the standard Victorian grand with a simpler and more vigorous design based on the harpsichord. The result was so popular that Broadwood was encouraged to market it commercially, although the original version, elaborately decorated by Burne-Jones and his assistants, remains unique. For further details and photographs, see Burne-Jones, exh. Hayward Gallery, London, etc., 1975-6, cat. nos. 208-10.

http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/sir-edward-coley-burne-jones-bt-ara-rws/2067827/lot/lot_details.aspx?from=searchresults&pos=9&intObjectID=2067827&sid=30dbe38a-93c8-46b1-bc69-be70266bd3dd&page=4

Edward Burne-Jones - A Sea-Nymph

2012-01-19T06:00:00.000Z

Price Realized
£1,128,000
($2,040,552)

signed and dated 'EBJ 1881' (lower left)
oil on canvas (unlined), in the original frame
48 1/8 x 48 1/8 in. (122.2 x 122.2 cm.)

A rediscovery

There can be few scholars working on an artist who do not have a mental list of pictures by their subject of research that are recorded but lost. Some they will know are beyond recovery, having been destroyed by enemy action or act of God, but there will be others for which no such information exists and the tantalising possibility remains that they may turn up. Such works represent a perpetual challenge to the art-historian concerned. Ultimately, of course, he wants to find them, but this he knows he may never achieve. Meanwhile there is a more pressing obligation: to use his existing knowledge to visualise the missing works and gauge what bearing they may have on received perceptions of the master's career and development. An old description, engraving or photograph, while obviously helpful, will only partially fill the gap.

Burne-Jones is no exception to this rule. His work is documented in remarkable detail, beginning with the year-by-year record that he kept himself. Now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, the account has certain limitations. Since he only began it in 1872, the entries for the years prior to this date are based on memory and sometimes inaccurate. Even from the time when the record becomes contemporary, the jottings are often too cryptic to give a full picture of what is afoot. Only by reading between the lines, for instance, can we piece together the complex development of the famous Briar Rose paintings (Buscot Park, Oxfordshire) and their subsidiary versions.

Nonetheless the record is invaluable, nor is it by any means our only resource.The two early monographs by Malcolm Bell (four editions 1892-8) and Fortunée De Lisle (1904) contain further lists, Bell's clearly being based on Burne-Jones's own record, to which he must have had access, (Bell was a nephew of Edward Poynter, who was Burne-Jones's brother-in-law, their wives being sisters). Lady Burne-Jones's Memorials of her husband (1904) is another essential source of information, even if this too sometimes needs decoding. Then there are the catalogues of the artist's lifetime retrospective exhibition at the New Gallery in 1892-3 and the two memorial shows of 1889-9, the main one again at the New Gallery, and a smaller one, focusing on drawings and studies, at the Burlington Fine Arts Club. As for other books and articles, Professor Fredeman's 'bibliocritical study' of the Pre-Raphaelite movement (1965) lists well over 100 items specifically related to Burne-Jones, the majority dating either from the artist's lifetime or the years before he fell out of favour in the early twentieth century. Many, including Julia Cartwright's account of his life and work and Aymer Vallance's important essay on his decorative art, published by the Art Journal respectively in 1894 and 1900, are lavishly illustrated.

There was, then, no shortage of information when Burne-Jones once again attracted attention as part of the general revival of interest in Victorian arts (a phenomenon usually dated to the 1960s, although green shoots had begun to push their way up long before then). The main problem was rather to trace and identify the pictures. Many, of course, were safely lodged in museums, even if they had been consigned to storerooms during the long years of eclipse; others remained in private hands or were coming onto the market as renewed interest drove prices up. Whatever the case, it was not long before most things were located and a fairly comprehensive picture of the artist's oeuvre emerged.

Even today, however, over thirty years after the Burne-Jones revival had found its first major expression in Martin Harrison's and Bill Waters' 1973 monograph (a book which, significantly, includes a gazeteer of relevant public collections), certain desiderata compromise that picture in one form or another. Some fall into the already mentioned category of irrevocable losses. The outstanding case is the pictures once belonging to the architect George Edmund Street, who had known Burne-Jones from very early days. Having descended in Street's family, they were destroyed when bombs fell on Bath in 1941. Among them were such important items as The Waxen Image, an elaborate pen-and-ink drawing of 1856, illustrating a scene of witchcraft, and St Theophilus and the Angel, a watercolour exhibited in 1867. The Waxen Image was the first work that Burne-Jones would acknowledge as belonging to his canon. Executed soon after his meeting with Dante Gabriel Rossetti in January 1856 and inspired by his hero's poem 'Sister Helen', it would have told us much about his initial response to the man who exercised such a crucial influence on his early development. St Theophilus also represented a decisive moment in Burne-Jones's career, being painted with Ruskin at his elbow to embody the critic's ideal of 'constant art', a concept that went far to define the aesthetic of his later style. At least St Theophilus is known from an old photograph, but the only record of The Waxen Image is a description in the catalogue of the 1899 exhibition at the Burlington Fine Arts Club.

If these works have gone forever, leaving us to cut our critical cloth accordingly, others belong to our second category: pictures for which no evidence of destruction exists and the strong or remote possibility remains that they may re-surface. Until its recent discovery in a private collection, A Sea-Nymph was among the most important of these provokingly elusive items.

The picture was by no means unknown. It is mentioned in Burne-Jones's own work-record, and although it was not exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery following its execution in 1880-1, it was included in his retrospective at the New Gallery twelve years later. Its appearance was also familiar since it was photographed by Frederick Hollyer, the Kensington photographer who had the monopoly for reproducing Burne-Jones's work. His images were syndicated widely, and A Sea-Nymph was illustrated on several occasions, for example in Julia Cartwright's Art Annual of 1894 and in Otto von Schleinitz's book on Burne-Jones in the Künstler-Monographien series (1901), the principal contemporary account of the artist's work in German. Last but not least, the picture had an interesting stylistic and historical context defined by a group of associated drawings and designs.

All this only made it more frustrating that the picture itself was missing. It was evident that it was not only a good-sized oil painting dating from the very height of Burne-Jones's career but a work of startling originality and boldness of conception speaking volumes about the impact of his decorative work on his painting. Further increasing the sense of loss was the fact that the picture was one of a pair, having a companion, A Wood-Nymph, that was exactly contemporary, identical in scale, and comparable in design. They had been together until March 1908, when they appeared in the William Connal sale at Christie's, but, finding separate buyers, had then been split up. A Sea-Nymph, it now emerges, was bought by a dealer who was probably acting for a sister of Connal's, in whose family it has descended. A Wood-Nymph was acquired by another dealer and, having passed through the hands of two collectors, found its way into the South African Museum, Cape Town, in 1944.

Had the whereabouts of both pictures been known, an attempt would almost certainly have been made to bring them together either for the Arts Council's Burne-Jones Exhibition in 1975, another early milestone in re-assessment, or for the centenary exhibition that was mounted by the Metropolitan Museum, New York, in 1998, and subsequently seen in Birmingham, Burne-Jones's birthplace, and Paris, the city where he had enjoyed such a vogue during the Symbolist era. The nearest anyone came to achieving this marriage was in 1987, when A Wood-Nymph was included in Burne-Jones and his Followers, an exhibition circulated in Japan by the Tokyo Shimbun, and A Sea-Nymph was illustrated (from the old Hollyer photograph) in the catalogue.

However, the re-discovery of the Sea-Nymph inspired Christie's to mount a small exhibition at their King Street premises in March 2005, in which the picture was briefly reunited with its companion in South Africa. Borrowing its title, Daughters of Delight, from Spencer's Epithalamion ('Bring with you all the Nymphes ... daughters of delight'), the exhibition not only put the two pictures side by side for the first time in nearly a hundred years but set them in the context of a group of related works, kindly lent at very short notice by museums and private collectors. Miraculously, both pictures were still in their matching original frames, making the sense of kinship all the more complete.

The exhibition had a fully-illustrated catalogue, which has been adapted for the present sale-catalogue entry. Not only have the entries for the other exhibits been dropped but, in accordance with Christie's usual practice, we have omitted the footnotes which gave the references for quotations and other subsidiary data. For all this, the exhibition catalogue should be consulted. At the same time, one or two facts which emerged during the exhibition have been incorporated in the present entry. In particular, it is now clear that the drawing of a mermaid and her babies in the Fitzwilliam Museum is one of two that Burne-Jones made to be traced into William Morris's fabric design of 1875, rather than being some indeterminate later version as we originally supposed.

Lot Notes
http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/sir-edward-coley-burne-jones-bt-ara-a/4516750/lot/lot_details.aspx?from=searchresults&intObjectID=4516750&sid=30dbe38a-93c8-46b1-bc69-be70266bd3dd

Dante Gabriel Rossetti - La Mandolinata

2012-01-18T17:00:00.000Z

signed with monogram and dated 1869 u.r.
red and black chalks heightened with white on buff paper
90 by 70cm., 35½ by 27½in.
ESTIMATE 150,000-250,000 GBP
Lot Sold: 181,250 GBP

Purchased from the artist by Thomas Agnew & Sons, 17 March 1870, for 80 guineas (Agnew's stock no. 9659 and
entitled La Mandoline);
Sold to John Dearman Birchall (1828-1897), 5 March 1872

Rossetti's fine chalk drawing, La Mandolinata shows an unidentified model at half length playing a mandolin. Her hair is dressed with strands of pearls gathered in an elaborate spiral decoration worn at the side of her head (an ornament seen previously in the artist's oil painting Fiammetta (Private Collection) and Monna Vanna (Tate), each of 1866, andJoli Coeur (Manchester City Galleries) and A Christmas Carol (ex Lord Leverhulme collection), each of 1867, and a again in paintings of the early 1870s). She wears a necklace in the form of stylised pansies and at her wrist a bracelet made in the pattern of flower whorls. On the third finger of her right hand she wears a ring consisting of a pyramid of metal with a stone resting at its centre (as also worn in Monna Vanna). Her dress is of a rich brocade pattern of flowers in red on a white of pale coloured ground, in the Venetian style, and falling from below her shoulders and decorated across her corsage with ribbon bows. On the right side is an architectural form decorated with a wreath of laurel leaves at the centre of which the artist has placed his monogram, while from behind the woman's back there appears further sprays of leaves.

Although the woman shown in La Mandolinata is not immediately recognisable as one of Rossetti's familiar models of the 1860s, her brown eyes and dark lustrous hair are feminine attributes of the kind that most appealed to him and which he was eager to introduce into his painted and drawn compositions. Redolent of the artist's work in the period, and in this sense of characteristic produce of the nascent Aesthetic movement, is the model's trancelike expression, as if she is transported into another sphere by the sweet intoxication of her own music-making. With subtlety and poignancy the artist offers the image of a beautiful woman, but one who remains elusive in the privacy of her own dream existence. La Mandolinata takes its place with other works by Rossetti of the 1860s showing women making music and playing musical instruments, and into which are instilled metaphors of imaginative departure from the actualities of daily life into a parallel and eroticised state of mind. The series commences with The Blue Flower (Barber Institute, University of Birmingham), of 1865, for which the painter's mistress Fanny Cornforth was the model, and in which a Japanese koto is played. The aforementioned A Christmas Carol, incorporating further exotic motifs suggestive of a secluded and artificial existence and for which the model was Ellen Smith, followed in 1867, while in the early 1870s Rossetti painted The Bower Meadow (Manchester City Galleries), in which Marie Stillman and Alexa Wilding play a zither and a mandolin respectively, and Roman Widow (Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico), in which Alexa Wilding is seen to rest each of her hands on the string of two separate stringed instruments, in idle distraction and in expression of her grief. Rossetti was the exponent of a subject matter which regarded the motif of music-making as a means of glimpsing the inner soul of the female persona.

Although not referred to by its given title in Rossetti's correspondence, on two occasions in the summer and early autumn of 1869 he mentioned chalk drawings that he had recently worked on and which were in the process of being sold. The first of these letters, dated 27 August and written to Frederic James Shields from Penkill in Ayrshire, reported that 'At this moment I hear from London that Agnew has called & bought 2 chalk drawings I left to be shown to him for 80gns each. If he will go on, this will furnish some profitable pot-boiling; & I tell you, as you were the first to suggest a connection with him'. (William E. Fredeman, The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Cambridge, 2004, IV, p. 254). This was followed by an interesting account of Rossetti's drawing method and recommendations as how to achieve richer effect in chalk by careful selection of tinted paper and by building up the textures of the composition by applying layers of chalk of different colours over the sheet. Then on 7 September he wrote to Jane Morris in Germany, again from Penkill, telling her that 'Work has been going on in the regular pot-boiling line while I have been away [...] and Agnew has been buying the drawings I did just before I left'. (Fredeman, ibid., p. 269). By this period in the artist's career, elaborate chalk drawings, made in their own right rather than as preparatory studies and done to be framed and displayed, had become one of his staple forms of production, and an important source of income.

Agnew's stock books confirm that the two drawings which Rossetti wrote about in his letters to Shields and Jane Morris were Penelope (Lord Lloyd-Webber Collection) and the present La Mandolinata. The two drawings were in fact bought separately, with Penelope recorded as entering Agnew's stock on 1 September 1869, and La Mandolinata not until the following March. Rossetti's asking price of 80 guineas was paid for each, and both were bought for stock rather than on behalf of clients. Penelope was sold to James Leathart in December 1869, while La Mandolinata was sold to J. D. Birchall on 5 March 1872.John Dearman Birchall came from a prominent and prosperous Quaker family in Leeds. He worked in the cloth industry as a young man but in 1868, aged forty, gave up his business interest and moved to Bowden Hall at Upton St Leonard's in Gloucestershire. He was a passionate collector of blue and white porcelain; in his own watercolour of the interior of the morning room at Bowden La Mandolinata may be seen hanging beside an ebonised and gilded sideboard all the surfaces of which are crowded with pots, and with the side walls given over to book cases and recesses containing further pieces of china (figure 00). Birchall's drawing serves as a valuable record of how works of art disparate types were displayed together in the period and how consideration was given as to how all the decorative elements might be harmoniously combined. Birchall and Rossetti were in direct contact in this period, as is documented by various entries in the former's diary (MS in the collection of his descendant). A diary entry for 1868 records that Birchall 'Gave £15 to Rossetti for dwg' (the drawing purchased or commissioned on this occasion is not identified). A further entry describes a visit to Rossetti's Chelsea studio in 1871, although the purpose of this meeting is unknown.

In addition to being a talented artist in his own right, Birchall was a familiar figure on the contemporary art scene, attending dinners and private views at the Royal Academy, Dudley and Grosvenor Galleries, and commissioning designs for stained glass windows from Edward Burne-Jones and decorative designs from Walter Crane. Other painters and draughtsman who were friends of his and who he describes meeting in diary entries were John Everett Millais, Richard Doyle and Frank Dicksee. A further link between Birchall and Rossetti was the Aesthetic designer John Aldam Heaton, who had been a childhood friend of the former's in Leeds and who had been commissioned to paint the interiors at Bowden Hall. Rossetti had known Heaton at least since 1861, when he had stayed with him and his wife Ellen Mary to paint her portrait (Regina Cordium: Mrs Aldam Heaton, ex Forbes Magazine Collection, New York), and from this time forward Heaton became a correspondent of Rossetti's, and one with whom he engaged in business transactions to do with placing works of his with collectors. Whether the idea of acquiring a drawing by Rossetti to place in conjunction with the collection of ceramics at that time by devised by Heaton was Birchall's own or one recommended to him, it was most fortuitous. Rossetti was himself one of the pioneering enthusiasts for blue and white china and had amassed a rich collection of his own in the 1860s in his house in Cheyne Walk in Chelsea.
The late 1860s, and specifically the year 1869 was not an easy time for Rossetti, with a variety of anxieties besetting him. His health was beginning to break down, with particular worries about his eyesight and he was suffering from chronic insomnia. In addition, he had financial problems, exacerbated by debts connected with outstanding commissions and monies previously received on account. Old friendships came under pressure, with a notable falling out with Frederick Sandys, and he was himself increasingly isolated, especially so during Jane Morris's long absence at Bad Ems in Germany, to which place she went in the latter part of 1869 for the sake of her health. Rossetti devoted much of his time to poetry, and particularly after the retrieval of the manuscript of his early poems from the coffin in which his wife Lizzie had been buried in 1862 he was occupied with the revision and preparation for publication of his verse. La Mandolinata - made as has been seen that same summer - may be regarded as especially interesting as coming from a period of turmoil and distress in Rossetti's artistic and personal life when he produced very few other works of art.

J. D. Birchall lent La Mandolinata to the memorial exhibition of Rossetti's works at the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1883, presumably having been asked to do so by the artist's brother William Michael Rossetti. In 1889 it was included in the checklist published by W. M. Rossetti as an appendix to his Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and Writer, and then ten years later it was likewise published by J. C. Marillier. Birchall died in 1897, by the drawing remained at Bowden Hall for another twenty-nine years, appearing in the various inventories of the house contents and finally being sold in 1926. in 1928 it appeared at Christie's in London, probably being bought on that occasion by the antiquarian booksellers Spencer and Co, and from whom ten years later it was purchased by the distinguished American academic Dr A. Joseph Armstrong (whose descendants own it to this day). The drawing therefore has an interesting provenance with only one brief period when its whereabouts are unknown. Dr Armstrong (1912-1954) was professor of English literature at Baylor University, Waco, Texas. He was renowned as an authority on Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and was a keen collector of all material relating to the Brownings (his collection formed the basis of the Armstrong Browning Library Collection of Browningiana at Baylor University. He was presumably in search of Browning material when he visited Spencer's premises in 1938, on which occasion the opportunity occurred to purchase La Mandolinata. He may have felt less confident of judging the merits of a drawing by Rossetti than in his more familiar field of literary manuscripts, and therefore sought corroboration of the attribution. In 1963 Dr Armstrong's widow, Mary Maxwell Armstrong explained in a letter to Virginia Surtees how her husband had 'bought this painting [sic] many years ago from a London dealer, and how to 'allay our fears as to its authenticity [the dealer Spencer] permitted my husband to take the picture in a taxi to the home of two nieces of Rossetti, then living in London. Dr Armstrong did so, [and] found the two ageing nieces who welcomed him warmly'.

In her book Pre-Raphaelite Twilight - The Story of Charles Augustus Howell (1954) Helen Rossetti Angeli, herself one of the two nieces visited by Armstrong, described how 'some examples of the kind [i.e. spurious drawings purported to be by Rossetti] were offered for sale to an American - no connoisseur of painting - by a reputable bookshop and art dealer in 1938. Of his lot one alone appeared to be a genuine with a traceable history - a crayon drawing very desirable to possess'. This was La Mandolinata, and thus the attribution to Rossetti was endorsed and the purchase of the drawing carried forward.

Although recorded in the early Rossetti literature, La Mandolinata has remained very little known since the time of its acquisition by Dr Armstrong, and in that time has never been shown in an exhibition of Rossetti's works.

We are grateful to Venetia Harlow of Agnew's for her assistance tracing provenance for this lot.
CSN

http://www.sothebys.com/en/catalogues/ecatalogue.html/2009/victorian-edwardian-art-l09687#/r=/en/ecat.fhtml.L09687.html+r.m=/en/ecat.lot.L09687.html/12/

Dinah Roe

2012-01-18T13:00:00.004Z

http://www.dinahroe.com/
great blog too

Edward Burne-Jones - Portrait of Georgina Burne-Jones

2012-01-18T13:00:00.002Z

oil on canvas
76 by 53cm.; 30 by 21in.
ESTIMATE 400,000-600,000 GBP
Lot Sold: 481,250 GBP

By descent to Margaret Mackail, née Burne-Jones (1866-1953);
To her daughter, Angela Margaret Thirkell, née Mackail (1890-1961);To her son, Lancelot Thirkell and thence by descent

Burne-Jones's hauntingly beautiful portrait of his wife Georgiana, and with their two children Margaret and Philip in the background, was begun in 1883 and then worked on at intervals. It was neither exhibited in his lifetime, nor shown at the memorial exhibition held at the New Gallery in 1898-99, presumably because it was regarded as too personal a document for public display. After the death of the sitter – Georgiana Burne-Jones died in 1920 – the portrait was left to Margaret, who herself died in 1953. The painting subsequently passed through three further generations of the descendants of Edward and Georgiana Burne-Jones, and is now offered for sale for the first time in its history.

The Burne-Joneses had been married in 1860, when Georgiana was twenty years old and Edward twenty-seven. The portrait therefore shows her at the age of forty-three and after twenty-three years of married life. The two children, Philip and Margaret, were born in 1861 and 1866 respectively, and were therefore twenty-two and seventeen when the portrait was begun.

Georgiana's father, the Revd George Browne Macdonald, was a Methodist minister. Her childhood – she was the fifth of eleven children (seven of whom survived into adult life) – was marked by material austerity and a high-minded dismissal of anything that might be considered worldly or frivolous. Even the reading of Shakespeare was prohibited
and the idea of attending a theatre unthinkable. The non-conformist upbringing that George Macdonald and his wife Hannah provided for their children, combined with frequent moves of home as their father was transferred from place to place within the Methodist ministry, seems to have instilled a quality of self-reliance and intellectual independence in their children. Among Georgiana's sisters, Agnes ('Aggie') married the painter Edward John Poynter, while Aliceand Louisa ('Louie') were respectively the mothers of the writer Rudyard Kipling and the prime minister Stanley Baldwin. The lives of these remarkable women are described in A.W. Baldwin's book The Macdonald Sisters (1960).

For Burne-Jones the purpose of portraiture was 'the expression of character and moral quality, not of anything temporary, fleeting, [or] accidental' (quoted Burne-Jones, exhibition catalogue, Hayward Gallery, London, and elsewhere, 1975-6, p. 76). Georgiana had an enormously strong character and was imbued with a moral quality that made her a demanding companion. She was absolutely stalwart in her loyalty to friends and family, standing by and supporting her husband despite his more wayward disposition, and enduring his craving for female attention. She was an adoring mother and gave emotional support to a wide circle of young people who gravitated towards her and looked to her as a mentor. Without side or selfishness, she had a vast gift for friendship, allowing complete honesty of exchange combined with total discretion. Her longstanding friendship with William Morris – her husband's friend since university, was probably the most important relationship of his whole life, and one upon which she also placed great reliance. Likewise, her shrewd intelligence allowed her to spot men and women who entered, or sought to enter, the circle of friends that formed around Burne-Jones who were self-serving or otherwise not to be trusted.

Unimpressed as Georgiana was by the false prestige of social rank, or indeed by the financial advantages of a successful professional life, she observed with dismay her husband's inability to resist the beguilement of worldly acclaim – notably on the occasion of his acceptance of a baronetcy. As Burne-Jones – once radical in his political views – became increasingly Tory, she more progressively embraced socialism, pacifism and feminism. A project designed to improve life for the London working classes was the establishment of the South London Art Gallery, and to which she devoted time and energy, and which was the practical fulfilment of John Ruskin's precept that works of art should be available for all to look at and study.

Georgiana Burne-Jones was a woman of artistic sensibility. In her youth she had learnt how to engrave wood blocks, collaborating with Elizabeth Siddal on a projected book of illustrated fairy tales. She sang and played the piano, to the delight of her friends and especially to Burne-Jones himself. She frequently served as a model for her husband in his imaginative subjects (most tellingly for the 1860 watercolour Clara von Bork (Tate Gallery), in which her personality was ideally matched to that of the caring and sweet-hearted figure represented, in contrast with the sinister and mendacious Sidonia von Bork, the subject of the pendant, for whom the model was Rossetti's mistress of the late 1850s, Fanny Cornforth). Among Georgiana's great achievements was the two-volume biography of her husband that she wrote after his death and which remains a vital source of information and insights, and in which she achieves extraordinary truthfulness and candour without ever betraying friends or family.

Although not conventionally beautiful, her physical appearance was a delight to those who loved her. As Walford Graham Robertson wrote, 'the quiet in those wonderful eyes of clearest grey was the centre of the strange stillness' that friends felt when they visited the Burne-Joneses at their home The Grange in Fulham (Time Was: The Reminiscences of W. Graham Robertson, 1931, p. 75). Burne-Jones himself well knew the power of his wife's formidable personality. As he wrote to May Gaskell: 'It makes me happy that Georgie welcomes you – some day come to see her for her own sake – she is the wittiest company, and very pious – I say pious because all things are serious to her – only she is bitter upon folly – she is not a Christian any more and yet she hates to be approached except on bended knees' (quoted Josceline Dimbleby, A Profound Secret, London, 2004, p. 94). As Penelope Fitzgerald wrote of the Burne-Joneses' marriage, 'Georgie, as Ned well knew, bore the burden of everything' (Edward Burne-Jones, London, 1985, p. 181), and in keeping with the unspoken dependence that he felt for her Burne-Jones provided an image of Georgiana that speaks of her sense of purpose. The solemnity of her expression and the unflinching gaze with which she returns the artist's inspection of her, may be regarded as indicating – as the Burne-Joneses' great grand-son Lance Thirkell said of it – 'something of the unhappiness of being the artist's long-suffering wife, which he perhaps did not see when he was painting it' (Jan Marsh, Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood, London, 1985, p. 334). Whether in his heart he acknowledged his transgressions – on occasions he allowed himself to be drawn into intenserelationships with other women – the portrait was undoubtedly intended as a token of his love for Georgiana.

She is shown at half-length and with her hands and forearms resting on a table or shelf that forms a parapet in the foreground. She is dressed in a dark coat the lustrous texture of which is seen in the outline of the sleeve. At the neck and cuffs, a simple fringe of lace appears, but otherwise her clothes are of the utmost simplicity. She appears to wear no jewellery; the ring finger of her left hand is obscured by the book she is holding, so the wedding-ring that she may be presumed to be wearing cannot be seen. Her dark hair is parted at the centre and carefully drawn to the back of her head, as it had been in the photograph taken of her at the age of sixteen, twenty-seven years earlier (see BurneJones, Georgiana, Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, London, 1904, two volumes, I, illustrated opposite p. 134). The portrait was almost certainly done at The Grange; a dark coloured internal wall forms the immediate backdrop to the figure, while on the right a flight of three steps leads into a room beyond – more brightly lit than that occupied by Georgiana. In this further space are shown the figures of Philip and Margaret – he seated at an easel and with palette and mahl-stick in his left hand; she standing behind in a flowing white dress as she watches her brother at work. This device whereby a glimpse is given into a space beyond and in which figures are represented on a much smaller scale may have been derived from Burne-Jones's study of sixteenth-century Italian art – which had become important to him in the course of successive visits to Italy and which he took his opportunity to study in collections at home. John Christian has linked the portrait of Georgiana with a portrait by Giulio Romano of c. 1531, then and now at Hampton Court, (traditionally said to show Isabella d'Este but recently claimed as a portrait of Margherita Palaeologa) (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and elsewhere, Edward Burne-Jones – Victorian Artist-Dreamer, 1998-9, exhibition catalogue, p. 260), which like the Burne-Jones portrait has a subsidiary composition at the upper right showing much smaller full-length figures. A further suggestion is that the portrait may owe something to Burne-Jones's interest in Spanish Baroque art, which was the object of fascination among progressive British painters in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. A possible prototype for the division of the composition into two distinct parts is Velasquez's Christ in the House of Mary and Martha (National Gallery), of 1618, a work which was in turn dependent on a Flemish artistic tradition which permitted figures to be treated on dramatically differing scales, and with noticeable varied degrees of finish, to be combined in a single composition.

Unambiguous as a coded message of love on the part of the artist for the sitter, but also perhaps an admission of his failings as a husband, was the book that Georgiana holds. This is John Gerard's Great Herball, or Generale Historie of Plantes, published in 1597. Burne-Jones consulted this source when devising his series of watercolours exploring the mythological association of flower names which came to be called The Flower Book (British Museum), also made in the 1880s. In the portrait Georgiana holds the book open to show the illustration of a heartsease or pansy, while resting on the page is a blue flower of the same plant. Gerard says of the heartsease that it 'groweth in fields and in gardens also, and that oftentimes of itselfe: it is more gallant and beautiful than any of the wild ones'. According to the traditional language of flowers, the heartsease is regarded as symbolical of loving thoughts and memories, and of
undying affection, even if with associations of sadness and loss. Burne-Jones's choice of this particular flower emblem may also have been influenced by John Ruskin's book Proserpina – Studies of Wayside Flowers, issued in parts from 1879 onwards and which he and Georgiana must certainly have read and probably also discussed with the author.

Ruskin described particular flowers on the basis of his own observations, writing of the variety in question: 'The wild heart's-ease of Europe [is] not larger than a violet, but perfectly formed, and firmly set in all its petals [and] quite one of the most lovely things that Heaven has made'. In his more general discussion of the genus Viola, Ruskin identifies the Shakespearean heroines 'who love simply, and to the death; as distinguished from the greater natures in whom earthly Love has its due part, and no more', and in a passage which surely must have reflected his friendship with both Edward and Georgiana Burne-Jones and his appreciation of what each meant to the other he concluded:

'Practically, in daily life, one often sees married women as good as saints; but rarely, I think, unless they have a good deal to bear from their husbands' (Ruskin Works, volume XXV, pp. 416, 420).

An entry in Burne-Jones's studio work-list records that in 1883 he 'began [the] portrait of Georgie with Phil andMargaret in the background'. Georgiana herself, in her biography of her husband, states that it remained unfinished.

The area of the composition on which he might perhaps have intended to work further is that in which are placed the figures of Margaret and Philip, which are relatively lightly sketched, but effectively so and in meaningful contrast to the immaculately finished figure of Georgiana. CSN

http://www.sothebys.com/en/catalogues/ecatalogue.html/2010/victorian-edwardian-art-including-masterpieces-l10133#/r=/en/ecat.fhtml.L10133.html+r.m=/en/ecat.lot.L10133.html/8/

Frederick Sandys - Study of a Woman’s Head

2012-01-18T13:00:00.001Z

Frederick Sandys - Miranda

2012-01-18T13:00:00.000Z

Edward Robert Hughes - Monna giovanna

2012-01-18T06:00:00.001Z

Arthur Hughes - The Door of Mercy

2012-01-18T06:00:00.000Z

The tomb holding Maria Zambaco is in the foreground

2012-01-17T17:00:00.000Z

Edward Burne-Jones - Earth Mother, 1882

2012-01-17T13:00:00.000Z

George Frederic Watts - The Honourable Mary Baring, Later The Marchioness Of Northampton

2012-01-17T06:00:00.001Z

John William Waterhouse - The Bouquet, study, 1908

2012-01-17T06:00:00.000Z

Simeon Solomon - The Little Improvisatrice (1867)

2012-01-16T13:00:00.000Z

http://www.leicestergalleries.com/19th-20th-century-paintings/d/simeon-solomon/13815

Simeon Solomon - Priestess Offering Poppies (1864)

2012-01-16T06:00:00.001Z

http://www.leicestergalleries.com/19th-20th-century-paintings/d/simeon-solomon/11383

Simeon Solomon - Love in Autumn (c.1860)

2012-01-16T06:00:00.000Z

http://www.leicestergalleries.com/19th-20th-century-paintings/d/simeon-solomon/13808

Simeon Solomon has been hijacked

2012-01-15T13:13:00.003Z

"Can I let everyone know that our old website devoted to research into the Pre-Raphaelite Simeon Solomon has been hijacked and its copyrighted pages are currently being used without our permission. The only genuine Simeon Solomon Research Archive is at www.simeonsolomon.com. The bogus site is at www.simeonsolomon.org. We have contacted the person who has stolen our old site (including years of extensive research) and hope they will see sense and take the site down. "
http://simeonsolomon.com/default.aspx
[Carolyn Conway]

St Martin's Church

2012-01-15T13:00:00.000Z

St Martin's Church is famous as the only church designed by the Pre-Raphaelite architect Philip Webb, and contains one of the most exquisite sets of stained glass windows designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, and executed in the William Morris studio. The Old Parish Church, on the outskirts of the town, was built from stone from Hadrian's Wall, and was in use until 1878, when the new church replaced it. Only the Chancel now remains.
http://www.visitcumbria.com/car/brampton.htm