Edward Burne-Jones (August 28, 1833 – June 17, 1898)

Pan and Psyche

1872-1874

It is perhaps a wrongheaded approach to evaluating Pre-Raphaelites, but I always seem to judge the artists by how they represent women in their works. Obviously these paintings are for more than just their female characters, but those characters are so representational to me of the romantic concept of England that I cannot divorce myself from this approach. And Burne-Jones was able to translate that sort of beautiful English romanticism into subjects not only Arthurian, but Greco-Roman, more beautifully, I would wager, than most of his contemporaries.