Drapery Study

1870–1877

Seven years away from exhibitions: turning to oils

After bitterly hostile attacks in the press he exhibited only two works in these years, yet worked unremittingly: he turned from watercolour to oils and planned the first “Briar Rose” series, “Laus Veneris”, “The Golden Stairs”, the “Pygmalion” series and “The Mirror of Venus”. His partnership with the photographer Frederick Hollyer, whose reproductions brought his work to a wide audience, also began then.

1870s

Georgiana grows close to Morris

In these difficult years Georgiana developed a friendship with Morris, whose wife Jane had fallen in love with Rossetti. If he asked her to leave her husband, she refused: both couples stayed together, and Georgiana and Morris remained close for the rest of their lives.

1873

“Love Among the Ruins” at the Dudley Gallery

Two watercolours shown at the Dudley Gallery in the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, were his only exhibited works of 1870–1877. One of them, “Love Among the Ruins”, was destroyed twenty years later by a cleaner who took it for an oil painting, and the artist afterwards reproduced it in oils.

1875

The firm becomes Morris & Co.

After the firm was reorganised as Morris & Co., Burne-Jones went on designing stained glass, and later tapestries, for it until the end of his career. His windows are in Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford, St Philip’s Cathedral in Birmingham, Salisbury Cathedral and many other churches.

May 1877

Triumph at the opening of the Grosvenor Gallery

At the first exhibition of the new Grosvenor Gallery, a rival to the Royal Academy, he showed eight oil paintings, among them “The Days of Creation”, “The Beguiling of Merlin” and “The Mirror of Venus”. Their success made him the herald and star of the new Aesthetic Movement.