But the women of Burne-Jones know that this fervour is no longer to be found upon the earth. The blood has been sapped, and the fire burns low, and the glorious, ancient might of love has disappeared. For these women life has lost its sunshine, and love its passion, and the world its hopes. The hue of their cheeks is pallid, their eyes are dim, their bodies sickly and without flesh and blood, and their hips are spare. With pale, quivering lips, and a melancholy smile or a strangely resigned, intensely grieved look flickering at the corners of their mouths, they live consumed by sterile longing, and pine in silent dejection, gazing into vacant space like imprisoned goldfish, or luxuriate in the vague Fata Morgana of an over-delicate, over-refined, and bashfully tremulous eroticism—

“And the chaplets of old are above us, And the oyster-bed teems out of reach; Old poets outsing and outlove us, And Catullus makes mouths at our speech. Who shall kiss in the father’s own city, With such lips as he sang with again? Intercede with us all of thy pity, Our Lady of Pain.”
CRANE.Portfolio.
THE CHARIOTS OF THE FLEETING HOURS.
(By permission of the Artist.)

Swinburne’s first ardent and sensuous volume of lyrics contains a poem, The Garden of Proserpine: it tells how a man weary of all things human and divine, and no longer able to support the intoxicating fragrance of the roses of Aphrodite, draws near with wavering steps to the throne where calm Proserpine sits silent, crowned with cold white flowers. And in the same way Rossetti’s flaming and quivering passion and his volcanic desire end in Burne-Jones with sad resignation.

Whilst Christianity and Hellenism mingle in the figures of Burne-Jones, a division of labour is noticeable amongst the following artists: some addressed themselves exclusively to the treatment of ancient subjects, others to ecclesiastical romantic painting in the style of the Quattrocento, and others again recognised their chief vocation in initiating a reformation in kindred provinces of industrial art.

R. Spencer Stanhope, who was at Oxford, like Burne-Jones, and, indeed, received his first artistic impulses while employed on the elaboration of Rossetti’s mural pictures for the Union, worked even in later days chiefly in the field of decorative painting, and is, with Burne-Jones, the principal designer for the interior decoration of churches in England. His oil-paintings are few, and in their gracious Quattrocento build they are in outward appearance scarcely different from those of Burne-Jones. In a picture belonging to the Manchester Gallery there is a maiden seated amid a flowery meadow, while a small Cupid with red pinions draws near to her; the landscape has an air of peace and happiness. Another picture—probably inspired by Catullus’ Lament for Lesbia’s Sparrow—displays a girl sitting upon an old town wall with a little dead bird. “The Temptation of Eve” is like a brilliantly coloured mediæval miniature, painted with the greatest finesse. As in the woodcut in the Cologne Bible, Paradise is enclosed with a circular red wall. Eve is like a slim, twisted Gothic statue. Like Burne-Jones, Stanhope is always delicate and poetic, but he is less successful in setting upon old forms of art the stamp of his individuality, and thus giving them new life and a character of their own. In their severe, archæological character his pictures have little beyond the affectation of a style which has been arrived at through imitation.

WALTER CRANE.FROM THE TEMPEST.WALTER CRANE.FROM THE TEMPEST.

The third member of this Oxford Circle, the poet William Morris, has exercised great influence over English taste by the institution of an industrial establishment for embroidery, painting upon glass, and household decoration. Keeping in mind that close union which existed in the fifteenth century between art and the manual crafts, he and certain of his disciples did not hesitate to provide designs for decorative stuffs, wall-papers, furniture, and household embellishments of every description. They were largely indebted to the Japanese, to say nothing of the old Italians, though they succeeded in creating a thoroughly modern and independent style, in spite of all they borrowed. The whole range of industrial art in England received a new lease of life, and household decoration became blither and more cheerful in its appearance. Only light, delicate, and finely graduated colours were allowed to predominate, and they were combined with slender, graceful, and vivacious form. The heavy panelling which was popular in the sixties gave way to bright papers ornamented with flowers; narrow panes made way for large plate-glass windows with light curtains, in which long-stemmed flowers were entwined in the pattern. Slim pillars supported cabinets painted in exquisite hues or gleaming with lacquer-work and enamel. Seats were ornamented with soft cushions shining in all the delicate splendour of Indian silks. And the pre-Raphaelite style of ornamentation was even extended to the embellishment of books, so that England created the modern book, at a time when other nations adhered altogether to the imitation of old models.

In his early years Arthur Hughes attracted much attention by an Ophelia, a delicate, thoroughly English figure of soft pre-Raphaelite grace; but in later years he rarely got beyond sentimental Renaissance maidens suggestive of Julius Wolff, and humorous work in the style of genre.

J. N. Strudwick, who worked first under Spencer Stanhope and then under Burne-Jones, was more consistent in his fidelity to the pre-Raphaelite principles. His pictures have the same delicate, enervated mysticism, and the same thoughtful, dreamy poetry, as those of his elders in the school. By preference he paints slender, pensive girlish figures, with the sentiment of Burne-Jones, taking his motive from some passage in a poet. In a picture called “Elaine” the heroine is mournfully seated in a lofty room of a mediæval palace. Another of his works reveals three girls occupied with music. Or a knight strewn with roses lies asleep in a maiden’s lap. Or again, there is St. Cecilia standing with her Seraphina before a Roman building. Strudwick does not possess the spontaneity of his master. The childlike, angular effect at which he aims often seems slightly weak and mawkish; and occasionally his painting is somewhat diffident, especially when he paints in the architectural detail and rich artistic accessories, and stipples with a very fine brush. But his works are so exquisite and delicate, so precious and æsthetic, that they must be reckoned amongst the most characteristic performances of the New pre-Raphaelitism. One of his larger compositions he has named “Bygone Days.” There is a man musing over the memories of his life, as he sits upon a white marble throne in front of a long white marble wall, amid an evening landscape. He stretches out his arms after the vanished years of his youth, the years when love smiled upon him; but Time, a winged figure like Orcagna’s Morte, divides him from the goddess of love, swinging his scythe with a threatening gesture. “The Past,” a slender matron in a black robe, covers her face lamenting. In Strudwick’s most celebrated picture, “The Ramparts of God’s House,” there is a man standing at the threshold of heaven, naked as a Greek athlete. His earthly fetters lie shattered at his feet. Angels receive him, marvellously spiritual beings filled with a lovely simplicity and revealing ineffable profundity of soul, beings who partake of Fra Angelico almost as much as of Ellen Terry. Their expression is quiet and peaceful. Instead of marvelling at the new-comer, they gaze with their eyes green as a water-sprite’s meditatively into illimitable space. The architecture in the background is entirely symbolical, as in the pictures of Giotto. A little house with a golden roof and gilded mediæval reliefs is inhabited by a dense throng of little angels, as if it were a Noah’s-ark. The colour is rich and sonorous, as in the youthful works of Carlo Crivelli.