Robert Laurence Binyon

“ His fame might rest on his purely decorative work. But his designs were informed with a mind of romantic temper, apt in the discovery of beautiful subjects, and impassioned with a delight in pure and variegated colour. These splendid gifts were directed in a critical and fortunate moment by the genius of Rossetti. Hence a career which shows little waste or misdirection of power, and, granted the aim proposed, a rare level of real success.
Authorities.—In 1904 was published Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, by his widow, two volumes of extreme interest and charm. ”

“ The colouring of the tapestries (of which the “Adoration of the Magi” at Exeter College is the best-known) is more brilliant than successful. The range and fertility of Burne-Jones as a decorative inventor can be perhaps most conveniently studied in the sketch-book, 1885–1895, which he bequeathed to the British Museum. The artist’s influence on book-illustration must also be recorded. ”

“ But he had an inbred “revolt from fact” which would have estranged him from the actualities of any age. That criticism seems to be more justified which has found in him a lack of such victorious energy and mastery over his materials as would have enabled him to carry out his conceptions in their original intensity. ”

“ Burne-Jones followed up the signal success of these pictures with “Laus Veneris,” the “Chant d’Amour,” “Pan and Psyche,” and other works, exhibited in 1878. Most of these pictures are painted in gay and brilliant colours. A change is noticeable next year, 1879, in the “Annunciation” and in the four pictures called “Pygmalion and the Image”; the former of these, one of the simplest and most perfect of the artist’s works, is subdued and sober ”