King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, by Sir Edward Coley Burne Jones, 1884

Presented by subscribers 1900, Tate Britain, Millbank, London

 

Oil on canvas

1880 - 1884

Dimensions: 290 cm x 136 cm

Signed and dated: EBJ 1884

 

"The subject of one of the artist's most famous paintings

comes from an Elizabethan ballad in Thomas Percy's

Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) and used by Tennyson

for a poem of sixteen lines, "The Beggar Maid," published in

1842. Burne-Jones made a first, unsatisfactory attempt at an oil

in 1861-62 (Tate Gallery, London) and seems to have taken up

the idea again with designs in a sketchbook datable to about

i875. I Two watercolors (one originally dated 1883) show further

resolution of the composition, but have the figures close

together, with the beggar maid looking away shyly; in both, the

choristers are singing lustily. 2 Work on the final canvas took up

most of the winter of 1883-84; as was his custom, Burne-Jones

made a cartoon (cat. no. 113), on which he could simultaneously

work out matters of detail and color. This shows some inter-

esting changes, such as the virtual elimination of the strong

sunlight streaming in from the left, Burne-Jones choosing in

the oil to darken the interior space and use the beggar maid's

pale skin as a focus of lightness.

 

According to the ballad, the king shared Pygmalion's view

of women — "He cared not for women-kinde, / But did them

all disdaine" — but fell in love at first sight with a beautiful

young beggar "all in gray / The which did cause his paine."

Tennyson simply describes their meeting, ending his poem

with Cophetua's oath, "This beggar maid shall be my queen!"

while Burne-Jones seems to illustrate a passage in the older

narrative, in which the beggar (identified as Penelephon) sits

speechless in awe within the royal palace:

 

The king with curteous comly talke

This beggar doth imbrace:

The beggar blusheth scarlet red,

And straight again as pale as leade,

But not a word at all she said,

She was in such amaze.

 

Even the young attendant singers, who provide a foil to the

immobility of the main figures, are engrossed and silent,

enhancing the impression of timelessness, of a moment frozen

within an atmosphere of unspoken romantic feeling.

 

The influence on the composition of Andrea Mantegna's

Madonna della Vittoria (1495-96; Musee du Louvre, Paris) has

been noted, as well as that of Carlo Crivelli's Annunciation of

1496 (which Burne-Jones would have seen at the National

Gallery), and here a similar use of heavily foreshortened

planes, gradually receding upward through a rather implausi-

ble architectural space, is cleverly disguised with a variety of

cloths, shadows, and exotic decorative details of a vaguely

Assyrian kind (in the ballad, Cophetua is called African, giv-

ing Burne-Jones the opportunity to offset his dark skin against

Penelephon's white limbs). The passage in the immediate fore-

ground, showing the near- abstract reflections of the sculpted

reliefs, may be compared to similar work in Pygmalion and the

Image (cat. no. 87a). A distant crepuscular landscape glimpsed

through the upper door not only affords an ingenious sec-

ondary light source but acts also as a reminder of the outside

world from which the beggar maid has come, both appearing

in simple, refreshing contrast to the king's opulent surround-

ings. The beggar maid holds a bunch of anemones, symbol of

unrequited (here, perhaps unsought) love, underlining the

emotional tension of the scene.

 

Burne-Jones encountered some difficulties during his long

winter of work on the painting. He worried especially over the

girl's dress; several drapery studies, including two in oil and

chalk of the full figure, 3 testify to his indecisiveness, described

in a letter of November 1883 about whether "to put on the

Beggar Maid a sufficiently beggarly coat, that will not look

unappetizing to King Cophetua, — that I hope has been

achieved, so that she shall look as if she deserved to have it

made of cloth of gold and set with pearls. I hope the king kept

the old one and looked at it now and then." 4 For the figure of

the king there is a superb large life study from the nude model,

now at Birmingham. 5 Cophetua's shield and crown (the latter

used also in the Briar Rose series [cat. nos. 55-58] and The Sleep

of Arthur inAvalon [fig. 107]) were painted from actual pieces

of metalwork, made to the artist's design by W. A. S. Benson. 6

Despite the demands of other work, as well as more welcome

interruption — Henry James took John Singer Sargent to see

its progress 7 — the painting was finally finished in the spring of

1884, Burne-Jones writing to his friend Madeleine Wyndham

on April 23: "This very hour I have ended my work on my pic-

ture. I am very tired of it — I can see nothing any more in it, I

have stared it out of all countenance and it has no word for me.

It is like a child that one watches without ceasing till it grows

up, and lo! It is a stranger." 8

 

All his effort was repaid, however, by the picture's success at

the Grosvenor Gallery exhibition in 1884, where, in Malcolm

Bell's words, it "assured finally the painter's claim to the high-

est place in English art, and convinced even the most obstinate

carpers of his unequalled powers." 9 The Art Journal praised the

"glowing eastern colour" of the undoubted "picture of the year."

"It is the idea," its critic concluded, "the inspiration of this pic-

ture which makes it so fine, and raises it to the level of the work

of the great masters of a bye-gone age." 10 F. G. Stephens, writ-

ing in the Athenaeum, also admired the artist s command of

color: "The whole of this magnificent picture is glorious in the

fulness of its dark rich tints of gold, azure, black, bronze, crim-

son, olive, brown, and grey, each colour of which comprises a

thousand tints and tones exquisitely fused and subtly graded.

Technically speaking, this picture is far more complete, better

 

Edward Burne-Jones,

King Cophetua and the

Beggar Maid, ca. 1883.

Watercolor,

2872 x 14V2 in.

(72.4 x 36.8 cm).

Private collection

 

drawn, more solidly painted, more searchingly

finished, and more impressively designed

than any we have had from the painter

before." 11 The Times declared that it was "not

only the finest work that Mr Burne-Jones has

ever painted, but one of the finest ever painted

by an Englishman." 12

 

This view would be shared by a European audience five years later, when the painting was sent to the Exposition Universelle in

Paris. Whereas The Beguiling of Merlin (cat.no. 64) had appealed in 1878 largely to a group of informed critics, King Cophetua proved so

universally popular in France that Burne-Jones was awarded the cross of the Legion d'honneur, and a vogue for his painting began

that was to last well into the new century.

Writing soon after the artist's death, the Anglophile critic Robert de la Sizeranne recalled visitors leaving the "machine" section of the Exposition, and how "we found our-selves in the silent and beautiful English Art section, and we felt as though everywhere else in the Exhibition we had seen nothing but

matter, and here we had come on the exhibition of the soul." Discovering King Cophetua, "it seemed as though we had come forth from the Universal Exhibition of Wealth to see the

symbolical expression of the Scorn of Wealth.

All round this room were others, where emblems and signs of strength and luxury were collected from all the nations of the

world — pyramids, silvered or gilt, representing the amount of precious metal dug year by year out of the earth; palaces and booths containing the most sumptuous products of the

remotest isles — and here behold a king laying his crown at the feet of a beggar- maid for her beauty's sake! ... It was a dream — but a noble dream — and every young man who passed that way, even though resolved never to sacrifice strength to right, or riches to beauty, was glad, nevertheless, that an artist should have depicted the Apotheosis of Poverty. It was the revenge of art on life." 13 The Belgian Symbolist painter Fernand Khnopff (1858- 1921) also remarked on the influence of the painting, which left its viewers "enwrapped by this living atmosphere of dream -love and of

spiritualised fire." 14 The painting was eventually bought for the nation in 1900, by public subscription, from the executors of the Earl of Wharncliffe. This greatly pleased Georgiana Burne-Jones, who had "always thought this picture contained more of Edward s own qualities than any other he did." 15 It remains in its original frame, one of the most spectacular of the Venetian Renaissance aedicular type favored by the artist. 16 1. For the oil of 1861-62, see Taylor 1973, fig. 3; the compositional studies are described in Robinson 1973. 2. Taylor 1973, fig. 4, and Sotheby's, June 19, 1990, lot 65. A simpler design in pencil, placing the atten-

dants on either side above, is in the National Museums and Galleries of Wales, Cardiff (Harrison and Waters 1973, fig. 201). There is also a half-size version in oils of the final design (6o 5 /s x 28 in. [154 x 71 cm]; sold at Sotheby's, June 20, 1989, lot 84).

3. Both in the Tate Gallery, London, reproduced in Taylor 1973, figs. 5, 7. 4. Memorials, vol. 2, pp. 134-35.

5. Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery (black chalk on brown paper, 230*04), where there are also three pencil studies for the king holding the crown (P73"75'7 2 )- A study for the head of one of the young singers, in the same medium, is also at Birmingham (22i'o4); a similar study of the other boy's head

(dated 1882, and modeled from Philip Comyns Carr, son of one of the directors of the Grosvenor Gallery) was sold at Christie's, November 6, 1995, lot 69. 6. Illustrated, along with other items, in Vallance 1900, figs. 42, 52.

7. Henry James to Elizabeth Boott, June 2, 1884, in Henry James; Letters, edited by Leon Edel, vol. 3, 1883-1895 (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), p. 43. "Sargent enjoys and appreciates [Burne-Jones's] things in the highest degree," James noted, "but slightly narrow B.J. suffers from a constitutional incapacity to enjoy

Sargent's — finding in them 'such a want of finish.'"

To James's mind, King Cophetua was "his finest thing, and very beautiful and interesting."

8. Memorials, vol. 2, p. 139. Previously Burne-Jones had written, "I torment myself every day - I never learn a bit how to paint . . . but I will kill myself or else Cophetua shall look like a King and the beggar like a Queen, such as Kings and Queens ought to be"

(quoted in Hartnoll 1988, p. 36).

9. Bell 1892 (1898), p. 57.

10. Art Journal, June 1884, p. 189.

11. Athenaeum, May 3, 1884, p. 573.

12. Times (London), May 1, 1884, p. 4. Punch magazine issued a typically deflationary cartoon, in whose caption the Mediaeval Royal Personage complains to the Pallid Maiden: "Oh I say, look here, you've been sitting on my crown," with the comment "Yes; and she looks as if she had, too, poor thing!" (May 24, 1884, p. 244).

13. Robert de la Sizeranne, "In Memoriam, Sir Edward

Burne-Jones: A Tribute from France," Magazine of

Art, 1898, p. 515; quoted in De Lisle 1904, pp. 1-2.

14. Fernand KhnopfT, "In Memoriam, Sir Edward

Burne-Jones: A Tribute from Belgium," Magazine of

Art, 1898, p. 520.

15. Memorials, vol. 2, p. 139. The painting hangs in the Tate Gallery, although Georgie's hope was that "it should be hung in the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, to which his mind and soul constantly turned as a hallowed place while he was alive"; letter of August 7, 1899, to George Howard, quoted in Lago 1981, p. 120.

16. See Paul Mitchell and Lynn Roberts, A History of European Picture Frames (London, 1996), p. 19, fig. 7a, for an original frame of exactly this kind, including winged cherubs' heads (used for Girolamo da Santacroce's Virgin and Child with Saints Augustine and Peter, ca. 1512, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art).

 

Stephen Wildman

22/12/2018

Fitzwilliam work list: 1880 ... designed Cophetua

1881... Worked on the big picture of Cophetua

1883... made studies for Cophetua - also a finished cartoon of the same and began a small panel of it

1883 -1884... painted Cophetua from October of this year until the end of April next when it was finished.

 

For the composition of the painting Burne-Jones relied heavily on Mantegna's painting The Madonna della Vittoria (Musée du Louvre), particularly in the profile of the King and his relationship with the maid.

Also interesting to note that Burne-Jones also drew from the painting for Quia Multum Amavit from the architectural frame work and he used the Temptation relief as a basis for a few stained glass designs.

 

A watercolour study for the picture ( private collection) has the beggar maid holding a spray of flowers which contains wheat - emblematic of riches ( Phillips: Floral Emblems 1825) which in the final painting are converted to anemones.

At first sight Wildman is correct in quoting a verse from Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, which is a literal description, but on reading Johnson's "Crown Garden of Goulden Roses" 1612, the impression given is that Cophetua is the victim to Cupid and that autobiographically interpreted, the painting implies that the artist had been a victim to fate and that on reflection, he was absolving himself of responsibility for his affair with Maria. From his standpoint in 1880 he was able to look back and feel less guilty.

 

Penelophon's features are modelled upon those of Georgie. In comparison with the animation found in the paintings and drawings of Maria the stillness in this paintings is remarkable. Its structure based upon an "S" shape and the geometric forms contribute to an over-arching solemnity. At the age of 53, Burne-Jones was assessing his position and considering his relationships.

 

The framework of the steps and the throne are decorated with reliefs modelled upon Assyrian examples which he had admired from his youth through visits to the British Museum and Layard's The Monuments of Ninevah (1849)

In the Summer of 1850 a letter quoted in Memorials Vol 1 p 45 the young Burne-Jones describes a visit to the British Museum in which he noted an admiration for the "Nimroud or Assyrian room". "In most of the bas-reliefs the king forms the most prominent object. He is in some hunting the wild bull, in other pursuing his enemies, to whom he bears the most gigantic proportions, always accompanied by the 'feronher' or sacred bird, a kind of talisman."

 

 

William Graham Letters

22nd may 1884 "... I wonder if it would be possible to have the Cophetua Cartoon at Grosvr. Place (even if incomplete) by the time Frances comes to us the middle of June? And I wish you would send me a note of the height and width you mean it to be framed tht I might see where to hang or stand it, but don't let it bother or hurry you if you would rather defer it.

 

The above makes clear that the painting was intended to be stood on the floor to enable the viewer to be part of the scenario, the steps being an invitation to enter the painting. An intention confirmed by the inclusion of feet on the bottom of the frame still in existence."

 

William Waters

 

"Edward Montagu Stuart Granville Montagu-Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie, 1st Earl Of Wharncliffe1899Bought from the Artist For £3000 (Stated In Pre-Raphaelites - Victorian Avant- Garde P 223) Letters and Collection of William Graham - Walpole Society 2000 P 169 and Letter From WG to EBJ May 1885 p. 269

Tate Britain - The Tate Gallery1900 - PresentPurchased from The Earl of Wharncliffe's Executors by Subscribers to The Burne-Jones Memorial Fund, 1900. Agnews purchased it on behalf of the Trustee's of the Burne-Jones Memorial Fund purchased for £6500 (Agnews' Account books)"

 

www.eb-j.org/browse-artwork-detail/ODkx

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