Burne-Jones, Sir Edward Coley 1833-98
English painter

Born in Birmingham of Welsh ancestry, he studied at Exeter College, Oxford, where he became the close friend of William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti and abandoned his studies for the Church. In 1861 he became a founder member of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Company (later Morris & Company), for which he designed tapestries and stained glass. His early works, mostly watercolours, such as The Merciful Knight (1864) and The Wine of Circe (1867), are brighter than his later oils which, inspired by the early art of the Italian Renaissance, are characterized by a romantic and contrived Mannerism. His subjects, drawn from the Arthurian romances and Greek myths, include The Days of Creation, The Beguiling of Merlin, The Mirror of Venus (1877), and Pan and Psyche (1878). His Love and the Pilgrim is in the Tate Gallery, London. His son, Sir Philip Burne-Jones (1861-1926), also became a painter.