William Morris

“ Pygmalion, a tall, dark-haired young man, in a long garment falling in straight folds to his feet, stands brooding on life's emptiness in the vestibule of his house. A sculptured group of the Three Graces denotes his profession and at the same time typifies the cold beauty of artifice, the beauty of the mind, while two girls, seen through the open door, speeding along the street in the artless embrace of innocent maidenhood, represent the beauty of the body and the love that waits his winning ”

“ Towards her, leaning both arms on one uplifted from the goddess's side, an exquisite piece of composition, the awakening image stoops from the carved capital, blossom-strewn by the adoring Pygmalion, her eyes raised in awe up to the goddess, who with fixed gaze and pointed finger inspires her with the Promethean fire of life. ”

“ And as the white chips from the chisel flew
Of other matters languidly he dreamed,
For easy to his hand that labor seemed,
And he was stirred with many a troubling thought,
And many a doubt perplexed him as he wrought.
And yet, again, at last there came a day
When smoother and more shapely grew the stone,
And he, grown eager, put all thought away
But that which touched his craftsmanship alone ”

“ Outside the window behind him women go about their daily business in the city street, and through another casement, in a recess between him and the image, is a glimpse of a garden and a spurt of water falling into a marble basin—the constant dropping that wears away the stone, as his constant prayers shall move the goddess Venus to a miracle on his behalf. ”

“ In Morris's version the dominant note is the passionate delight—enthusiasm verging upon madness—of the artist and craftsman in his own handiwork, reflecting, to a marked degree, Morris's own temperament, one of the leading characteristics of which was his habit of hurling himself headlong into each new project as it claimed his attention from time to time. That he was prevented thereby from arriving at perfection in any one art need not lessen the admiration due to him for his whole-souled (though usually short-lived) absorption in many and diverse arts. ”

“ Of men's misdoings could avail him now—
Nay, scarcely seaward had he turned his eyes
If men had said, "The fierce Tyrrhenians row
Up through the bay; rise up and strike a blow
For life and goods"; for naught to him seemed dear
But to his well-loved work to be anear.
Then vexed he grew, and, knowing not his heart,
Unto himself he said, "Ah, what is this
That I who oft was happy to depart
And wander where the boughs each other kiss
'Neath the west wind, now have no other bliss
But in vain smoothing of this marble maid,
Whose chips this month a drachma had outweighed? ”

“ In his "Apology" prefixed to The Earthly Paradise, Morris clearly and definitely disclaims any moral purpose in the poems comprised in it.
"Why should I strive to set the crooked straight?" he writes. How far this feeling was shared by Burne-Jones we can never know, but nearly all of his biographers are agreed that a love of beauty, as he understood it, was his main preoccupation, or, to use his own words, that a picture should be a "beautiful, romantic dream." Julia Cartwright, in her Life and Work of Sir Edward Burne-Jones, says: "He never tried to point a moral or to teach a lesson ”

“ Malcolm Bell, also, writing of the art of Burne-Jones and of its critics, expresses a like opinion, and his analysis of the paintings composing the Pygmalion Series is not only interesting in itself, but is especially so as showing the extent to which the man of letters can read his own interpretation into the work of a painter. ”

“ Marble no longer, but not yet altogether woman."
"Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time," is even more appropriate to Burne-Jones than to its author, William Morris, and it is an ever-to-be-regretted misfortune that two poems only of those comprised in The Earthly Paradise should have received at his hands that illuminative pictorial treatment which he, "the arch-dreamer of the nineteenth century," as Cosmo Monkhouse styles him, alone could give. ”

“ Frederick Hollyer, we have in the reproductions which follow faithful transcripts, in all but color, of the original paintings, and can carry out, after the lapse of a quarter of a century and in another hemisphere, a project which both Burne-Jones and William Morris held dear, but which neither of them lived to see realized. ”

“ PYGMALION AND THE IMAGE William Morris
From the painting by G. F. Watts. R.A.
PYGMALION AND
THE IMAGE BY
WILLIAM MORRIS
ILLVSTRATED WITH
PICTVRES BY SIR EDWARD
BVRNE-JONES
NEW YORK R·H·RVSSELL
PVBLISHER MCMIII
Copyright, 1903
By Robert Howard Russell
Published October, 1903
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS By SIR EDWARD BURNE-JONES, Bart.
ith the exception of "The Doom of King Acrisius," "Pygmalion and the Image" is the only poem of The Earthly Paradise for the illustration of which Burne-Jones actually executed a complete series of pictures ”