PLATE II.—SIDONIA VON BORK
(In the possession of W. Graham Robertson, Esq.)
As an early picture, painted while Burne-Jones was still under the influence of Rossetti, "Sidonia von Bork" illustrates characteristically a particular phase of the artist's practice; one of much importance in the evolution of his art. "Sidonia von Bork" was one of the characters in a romance called "Sidonia the Sorceress," which was written by a Swiss clergyman. The book was a favourite of Rossetti's, so that evidently Burne-Jones was influenced by his master both in his choice and in his treatment of a subject from its pages. A reprint of the story was issued by William Morris from the Kelmscott Press.
It is probable that some of his consistency, and a very large part of his artistic conviction, came from the manner of his preparation for the profession in which he attained such exceptional success. Unlike most artists he did not begin by acquiring a knowledge of the mechanism of painting, and did not proceed to apply trained technical skill in experiments intended to determine the direction in which he might practise profitably in after life. In his case the process was reversed, for his direction was settled before he had learned even the rudiments of pictorial practice, and the time which other men would have given to experiment he devoted to seeking how he would best realise the ideas that were finally formed in his mind. Tentative work, to test the popular point of view, he never produced; he began straight away with what he knew to be his right material, and the only difference which is to be noticed between his first and his last paintings is a difference in technical facility. The uncertainties of handling in his earlier pictures disappeared in those which he painted in later life, but of mental uncertainty no trace is at any time to be discovered.
Yet the curious fact must be noted that this artist, with his strong personality, his great gifts, and his absorbing devotion to a splendid ideal, chose his profession by a kind of afterthought—almost by accident. There is no record in his case of a boyhood spent in struggles against a fate which seemed to forbid him all satisfaction of his dearest aspirations; there is not even evidence that he had any artistic aspirations at all. He grew up, practically to manhood, before he discovered that he had either the wish or the capacity to attempt any form of æsthetic expression, and his powers lay completely dormant through all those youthful years which have been to most other artists a time of longing after the apparently unattainable and of striving to follow the promptings of nature and temperament.
This strange torpidity of the artistic side of his intelligence was, no doubt, due to the surroundings among which he passed his childhood. He was born on August 28, 1833, at Birmingham, where there was in those days little enough to foster a love of art, and in the respectable but dull atmosphere of a middle-class home he had no chance of any awakening. His mental activity, however, was shown in the zest with which he threw himself into the study of the classics during the seven or eight years that he spent at King Edward's School. He gained at that time a very thorough knowledge of the classic writings in general and of classic mythology in particular, which was amplified in after life by constant reading; and he acquired a student-like habit of research into the learning of the past which served him well when the time came for him to picture the fancies that were forming in his mind.
But at first the purpose of his education was to fit him for the walk of life which his father wished him to follow. He was, it was decided, to enter the Church, and in 1853, having won a scholarship at Exeter College, he went up to Oxford ready and willing enough to work for success in the profession which seemed so well suited to him. He had at that time no feeling that his real vocation lay in quite another direction, or that there was any different way in which his studious mind might be exercised. The idea of taking orders was not uncongenial to him, and he began his Oxford life in no spirit of rebellion against the career which had been mapped out by his elders.
At Oxford, however, came his awakening. He found himself in contact there with quite a new phase of existence, in an atmosphere which was made doubly impressive by its unlikeness to any that he had previously known, and among surroundings which by their novelty had a great power to stimulate his imagination. Under such conditions the expansion of his mind was unusually rapid, and the arousing of his dormant æsthetic instincts followed immediately. This latter development of a side of his nature, of which previously he could have been, at best, only dimly conscious, was greatly assisted by his friendship with a remarkable man who had entered Exeter College on the same day that he did, and who had come to Oxford with the same intention of eventually taking holy orders. This man, William Morris, was destined to play a most important part in British art activities, and by his militant æstheticism to bring about many momentous changes in the public taste; and the chance which brought him and Edward Burne-Jones together, when they were both at the most impressionable period of life, was especially fortunate.