William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam'

Apollo, Feb, 2004 by Michael Braesel

Five of the six miniatures represent couples, three of them in nocturnal landscapes, and their relationship to the text remains distinctly tenuous. They are not narrative scenes, illustrations in the stricter sense, but rather pictorial equivalents of the mood of the text, the visualisation of its melancholy tenor and vanitas subject-matter.

The miniatures relate to the theme of transience in the 'Rubaiyat' in various ways. The choice of evening and nocturnal landscapes (pp. 3, 13, 17) and the contrasting of a dark interior with a bright, blooming garden (p. 9) refer to the related themes of mortality and death.

In the miniatures on pp. 5 and 13, the reference to this theme is made at the level of motif by means of ruins, a tomb and the desolate dark looking vegetation; on p. 9, on the other hand, it is made symbolically through the interpolation of details such as a lamp, a vase of flowers, a mirror and a shell which are regarded as traditional symbols of ephemerality, presumably familiar to Burne-Jones through his preoccupation with Netherlandish old master painting. Thus, the round mirror, for example, is a variation on the one in Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini wedding, which had been in the National Gallery collection since 1842. (37)

The relatively low oblong format of the miniatures, covering only ten lines, forced Burne Jones to use sitting or crouching figures. They are tightly squeezed into the picture field and occupy almost its entire height.

In these miniatures, as in the one in 'A Book of Verse', Burne-Jones's figures are executed with a free touch. Drapery folds are sometimes rendered in a sweeping manner, white heightening is applied in a broad, grainy fashion. Heads are designed without individual facial features, emphasising the in any case androgynous-looking character of the figures. The thick brushstrokes and preference for green and blue colours correspond to Burne-Jones's gouaches of the 1860s and 1870s, such as Green summer of 1864, or the version in oils of the same composition of 1868, which was in fact bought by William Graham (both in private collections), or The king's wedding (also formerly William Graham collection) (Fig. 12) and the Portrait of Maria Zambaco, both of 1870 (and both in the Clemens-Sels-Museum, Neuss). (38) The cool blue-green values are complemented in each case by warmer red or yellow-orange touches. However, the use of gold heightening in the miniatures finds no parallel in Burne-Jones's panel paintings of the period. On the other hand, certain similarities can be found in the gouache, The garden of the Hesperides of 1870-73 (Hamburger Kunsthalle), the painting Laus Veneris of 1873-78 (Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne) and the cycle The days of creation of 1870-76, which was executed in gouache (Fogg Art Gallery, Harvard University Art Museums).

[FIGURE 12 OMITTED]

In the miniatures, Burne-Jones always confines himself to a limited number of colours, which--in a variety of shades--determine the colouring of the miniature, which led Mackail to reach the somewhat overstated conclusion that they were executed 'each in a different scheme of colour', and overlook the linking factors. (39)