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(Coley)

(b Birmingham, Aug 28, 1833; d London, June 17, 1898).

English painter and decorative artist. He was the leading figure in the second phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. His paintings of subjects from medieval legend and Classical mythology and his designs for stained glass, tapestry and many other media played an important part in the Aesthetic Movement and the history of international Symbolism.

He was the only surviving child of Edward Richard Jones, who ran a small carving and gilding business in the centre of Birmingham, and Elizabeth Coley, the daughter of a prosperous jeweller. Christened Edward Coley Burne Jones, he was called simply Edward Jones until c. 1860 when he adopted the surname Burne-Jones. From an early age he drew prolifically but with little guidance and no intention of becoming an artist. In 1844 he entered the local grammar school, King Edward’s, destined for a career in engineering. It was probably in this connection that in 1848 he attended evening classes at the Birmingham School of Design. By the time he left school in ...

(b Liverpool, 1831; d London, Jan 4, 1892).

English shipping magnate and collector. Hired as an apprentice by the Liverpool shipping firm of Bibby, Sons & Co., he rose rapidly through the ranks, buying out the firm in 1872. He became a major patron of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, buying from 1867 such works as Lady Lilith (1868; Wilmington, DE A. Mus.) and La Pia de’ Tolomei (1868–80; Lawrence, U. KS, Spencer Mus. A.). Leyland liked musical subjects and he ensured that his purchases accorded in mood and size with one another or with his existing decorative scheme. Under Rossetti’s guidance he built up an extraordinary collection of Italian Renaissance pictures, including works by Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Sandro Botticelli (the Casa Pucci series; Madrid, Prado) and Carlo Crivelli. He also bought such works by Edward Burne-Jones as the Wine of Circe (1863–9; priv. col., see The Pre-Raphaelites, exh. cat., London, Tate, 1984, p. 304).

Rossetti introduced Leyland to ...

(b London, April 5, 1837; d London, April 10, 1909).

English poet and critic. His letters and critical writings reveal him as unusually learned about, and sensitive to, the visual arts. His interest in painting was stimulated in 1857 when he met Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris at Oxford and, under their influence, adopted Pre-Raphaelite ideals. The effect on his poetry was transitory, but it was important for his prose and criticism. His Poems and Ballads (London, 1866), revolutionary in technique and in emphasis on erotic subject-matter, caused a sensation. William Blake (1868), an influential work of Victorian art criticism and Swinburne’s most important contribution in that field, not only promoted Blake’s re-evaluation but was also a powerful manifesto of Art for Art’s Sake and of Symbolist Aestheticism. For Swinburne the only correct response to a work of art was another work of art; hence his poetic, impressionistic and highly subjective prose criticism, with many synaesthetic comparisons (in ...