This God of Love of his fasoun Was lyke no Knave, he quistroun His beautee gretly was to pryse A nude study for the figure of ‘Love’ for the large drawing and tapestry, Romaunt of the Rose Love, Romaunt of the Rose is a preliminary study for an embroidery panel entitled The Pilgrim in the Garden of Idleness observing Pairs of Dancing Figures, in which the personifications of Love and Beauty stand together holding hands. The embroidery was one in a series of beautiful needleworks, which were made to run above the panelling in the dining room of Sir Lowthian Bell’s brand new country house ‘Rounton Grange’ in Yorkshire. Philip Webb, who was commissioned in 1872 to both build and decorate this extraordinary house, immediately contacted the fashionable Morris & Co, for whom Burne-Jones was the chief figure designer. The design for the magnificent dining room was modelled upon the companies’ former project, the house of George Howard, the 9th Earl of Carlisle, 1 Palace Green, Kensington. Burne-Jones began the designs for the ‘Rounton Tapestries’ simultaneously with the building of the house, completing the first set by November 1874. Sir Lowthian’s wife and daughter were both skilled needlewomen and were made responsible for the execution of this epic project. Six years later in 1880, the tapestries were finally finished. Sadly, the house has since been demolished, however the tapestry frieze is now housed in the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow. Love and Beauty, the cartoon for which this drawing is a study, appeared in the Sotheby’s sale of 30th March 1994 and, like the present drawing, demonstrates the fineness of technique characteristic of his pencil drawings of the mid-1870s. This refinement and elegance gradually entered the figurative studies made by Burne-Jones from the early 1870s; as he slowly recovered from the traumas of his private life, his figures became tall, lean and executed with delicacy and precision. They enter a world of symbolic introspection, which is enhanced by the mannerist style of his confident middle period. Subsequently the designs made for the embroidery panels were used for three individual oil paintings, of which the painting, The Heart of the Rose, is the final work in the series.
Mrs. Whitney Payson, Long Island, New York to 1984 Peter Nahum, London Private collection, USA
London, Peter Nahum, Pre-Raphaelites and Symbolists, May-July 1984, (illustrated on the cover of the brochure)
T. Martin Wood, The Drawings of Sir Edward C. Burne-Jones, Newnes, London, no date (c. 1900) O. Von Schleinitz, Burne-Jones, Berlin 1901 F. De Lisle, Burne-Jones, Methuen, London 1904 W. R. Lethaby, Philip Webb and His Work, Oxford University Press 1935 M. Harrison & W. Waters, Burne-Jones, Barry & Jenkins, London 1973