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Sir Edward Burne-Jones

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- set matching 'Prominent men: drawings by Harry Furniss'

Sir Edward Burne-Jones, by Harry Furniss, 1880s-mid 1890s -NPG 3432 - © National Portrait Gallery, London

© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Sir Edward Burne-Jones

by Harry Furniss
Pen and ink on paper, 1880s-mid 1890s
12 1/4 in. x 7 1/4 in. (311 mm x 184 mm)
NPG 3432

Inscriptionback to top

Inscr. lower left: ‘Hy. F’;
and at top: ‘Chap XVI Sir E. Burne-Jones’.
On verso artist’s stamp ‘for publishing’ and ‘no.2677’.

This portraitback to top

The artist Harry Furniss was a noted caricaturist and illustrator for Punch and other magazines. In his memoirs Furniss observed that the general public laughed at Burne-Jones’s works and their creator, who ‘wore his hair long’.[1] Although this volume contains a caricature of Burne-Jones in a contorted posture (see ‘All known portraits, By other artists, Posthumous portraits, 1904’) it does not seem that artist and sitter were well acquainted. Nevertheless the present sketch is a confident and accomplished work, apparently sketched from life and possibly drawn at a club or semi-public gathering; this would indicate a date before about 1895, when Burne-Jones’s health declined. The inscription ‘Chap XVI’ may relate to unrealized reproduction in one of Furniss’s books.[2]

See NPG collection 3337–3535, 3554–3620

Dr Jan Marsh

Footnotesback to top

1) Furniss 1904, pp.38–9.
2) The reference on the verso to index no.2677 is puzzling as in the register of Furniss drawings c.1885–1917 (NPG MS 116) this number is annotated ‘Balfour’.

Physical descriptionback to top

Nearly whole-length, almost profile to right, seated on swivel chair, reading newspaper.

Provenanceback to top

The artist; his sons, from whom purchased (through Theodore Cluse), April 1947

Exhibitionsback to top

Harry Furniss: Confessions of a Caricaturist, NPG, London, 1983 (22, not ill.)

View all known portraits for Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Bt

View all known portraits for Harry Furniss