Sir EDWARD COLEY BURNE-JONES, A.R.A.
(1833-1898)
 

Cupid delivering Psyche

1867

watercolour, bodycolour, chalk and oil pastel on paper,

52.1 x 61 cm

inscribed: E.B.J. 1867

P.296

The composition is based on one of the designs that Burne-Jones made in 1865 for ‘The Story of Cupid and Psyche’ in William Morris’s Earthly Paradise. Morris originally intended the book to be lavishly illustrated with woodcuts, and Burne-Jones executed hundreds of designs for this purpose over several years. Although the project was eventually abandoned for technical reasons, the book being published without illustrations in 1868-70, the designs provided him with a bank of compositional ideas for paintings on which he was to draw until the very end of his life.

This is particularly true of the illustrations to ‘Cupid and Psyche’, which were begun first and carried further than those for any of the other poems; forty-seven finished designs survive (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford). 

The present painting illustrates one of the closing scenes in the narrative. Psyche, having lost Cupid through her own disobedience, is subjected by Venus, her enemy, to a series of daunting tasks. The last is to take a casket to Proserpine in Hades. Psyche accomplishes this mission, but when Proserpine returns the casket to her, she foolishly opens it, hoping that the beauty it contains will be hers. Overcome by the fumes, which emerge, she falls into a death-like trance.  However, Cupid is alerted to her peril and rushes to her rescue:

                                      And kneeling down he whispered in her ear,

                                      ‘Rise, Psyche, and be mine for evermore,

                                      For evil is long tarrying on this shore’.

                                      Then when she heard him, straightway she arose,

                                      And from her fell the burden of her woes.

Re-united with her lover, Psyche enters the portals of Olympus, and is granted immortality by the gods.

The primary version is a watercolour exhibited at the Old Water-Colour Society in 1867 (London Borough of Hammersmith Public Libraries, on loan to Leighton House, Kensington), and there is an unfinished oil version of about the same date (Sheffield Art Gallery). The composition also occurs in one of the mural paintings based on the Cupid and Psyche designs that Burne-Jones, assisted by Walter CRANE, carried out for the dining room at George Howard’s London House, 1 Palace Green, in 1872-81 (now in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery).

JC

PROVENANCE: Sir Philip Burne-Jones (1861-1926), the artist’s son; William R. Moss, Lancashire, by 1887; The Leicester Galleries; Roland, Browse and Delbanco, from whom purchased by Gallery, July 1959.

EXHIBITIONS: Royal Jubilee Exhibition, Manchester, 1887,Fine Art Section, no.1347; Southport Centenary Exhibition, Southport, 1892; Dei ed Eroi:  Tradizione Classica e interpretazione del mito nella cultura figurativa fra 1800-1900, Rome, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, 1996, no.40; Edward Burne-Jones: Victorian Artist-Dreamer, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, & Birmingham, Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery only, 1998-99, no.39.

REFERENCE: Burne-Jones, Arts Council exhib., 1975-6, cat.p.43, under no.99.

Copyright © Trustees of Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford.

Extract taken from Watercolours and Drawings, Cecil Higgins Art Gallery by Evelyn Joll.