British, 19th century, male.
Born 28 August 1833, in Birmingham, England; died 17 June 1898, in Fulham (London), England.
Painter, decorative artist, draughtsman, watercolourist, illustrator. Figures, scenes with figures. Designs for tapestries, designs for stained glass, designs for mosaics.
Symbolism.
Pre-Raphaelite.
The son of Edward Richard Jones and Elisabeth Coley, Edward Burne-Jones began to prepare for a career in the church and enrolled as a theology student at Exeter College, Oxford, where a fellow pupil was William Morris. However, his sight of a drawing by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, an illustration for William Allingham’s The Maids of Elfin Mere, was decisive in his change of direction. He was 22 when, in 1855, he went to London to show his first drawings to Rossetti, whose work had so deeply moved him. Rossetti encouraged Burne-Jones and offered to take him as a part-time pupil. Together with William Morris, Burne-Jones left university without a thought for his abandoned degree and, after a year studying with the young Rossetti, sought to earn a living by selling pen drawings and watercolours at the same time as continuing to take lessons from Rossetti. In ...
