KING COPHETUA AND THE BEGGAR MAID.  1884. Oil, 144'2 x 53'5 in. / 290 x
136 cm. Tate Gallery. London

The subject of the work is an Elizabethan ballad, retold in Tennyson's
poem "The Beggar Maid", in which a king searches for a pure wife. After
findind her, the king offers his crown in return for the love of the
ragged beggar girl, who in Burne-Jones's painting sits as if enthroned
while he sits beneath her in homage. The anemones in the girl's hand
symbolize rejected love, while the characters represents Burne-Jones's
himself and his wife Georgiana; it is said that the head of the king
had to be modified to make its model's identity less obvious. Starting
with a small oil version in about 1861, Burne-Jones progressively
developed the theme with an extensive series of pencil studies of the
various elements (now in the Birmingham City Art Gallery, Manchester
City Art Gallery, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and the Fitzwilliam
Museum, Cambridge). Certain details were derived from actual objects -
the crown, for example, was specially made by W.A.S. Benson.
Burne-Jones commented in a letter "I work daily at 'Cophetua and his
Maid'. I torment myself every day - I never learn a bit how to paint.
No former work ever helps me - every new picture is a new puzzle and I
lose myself and am bewildered - and it's all as it was at the beginning
years ago. But I will kill myself or Cophetua shall look like a King
and the beggar like a Queen, such as Kings and Queens ought to be." He
had worked on it for so long that he had grown "...very tired of it - I
can see nothing any more in it, I have stared out of all countenance
and it has no word for me.   It is like a child that one watches
without ceasing until it grows up, and lo! It is a stranger."

The resultant somewhat loboured and overworked quality of the painting
has attracted a degree of criticism, yet it remains one of
Burne-Jones's mots impressive and best-known images. When the huge
painting was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1884, the art critic
of The Times, which had previously been only moderate in its praise of
Burne-Jones's, described it as "not only the finest work that Mr
Burne-Jones has ever painted, but one of the finest pictures ever
painted by an Englishman." It also received acclaim when it was shown
in Paris at the Exposition Universelle in 1889 (at which the centre of
attraction was the newly-completed Eiffel Tower). Burne-Jones was duly
awarded the Croix de Legion d'Honneur.  The painting was shown in
England at the New Gallery in 1892 and again at the memorial exhibition
after Burne-Jones's death. Following this last showing, Georgiana hoped
that it would go to eh National Gallery, but it was acquired by the
Tate Gallery.


sent by ALONSO GARCIA, Vicente Miguel <valonso@MSF.UNIZAR.ES>