This painting was the last major work that Burne-Jones completed. It was dedicated to his close friend, the poet Algernon Swinburne. The idea of the God of Love guiding a Pilgrim on his quest comes from The Romaunt of the Rose by the medieval poet Geoffrey Chaucer, a book that Burne-Jones had read while a student at Oxford and which influenced many of the works he produced in collaboration with William Morris. Love is presented both as a Christian angel and as Cupid, the classical god of love.
On the same scale as the drawings for the Garden of Idleness, this study for Love Leading the Pilgrim (cat. no. 75) must be Burne-Jones s original design, although the land- scape background — not required for the embroidery — may have been elaborated to give the work a sense of completeness. De Lisle dates it to 1877, and describes it as: one of the finest, in quality of line and composition as well as in charm of poetic feeling, of all Burne-Jones s drawings. Love is represented as a spirit, a guardian angel crowned with roses, round whose head all the birds of the air make sweet music — He semede as he were an aungel That down were comen fro hevene clere, And so intent is the Pilgrim on following him, that he does not even see the smiling valley with its winding river, nor the road which leads to the fair city; but, with his hand in that of Love, he climbs the rocks, and struggles through the thorny places, happy with that vision in front of him, anxious only to follow. 1 The artist presented the drawing to the daughter of his patron William Graham. Until her marriage to John Horner in 1883, Frances provided a platonic focus for many of his later romantic yearnings, and reciprocated with an appreciation of his art and benevolent humour. 2 The gift is recorded on the drawing by a cartouche with her initials, symbolically pierced by one of Cupid s arrows. Burne-Jones began the large oil painting in 1877, probably then deciding to make several substantial changes in setting and detail. Alterations were made to both figures, especially in the positioning of the heads, and the rather austere rocky fore- ground, affording much scope for precise pencil work, was given over to a softer grassy space, with foliage (necessitating a rare study from nature) added to the thorny brambles; small, brightly coloured birds also appear among the stems, painted from a group of delightful studies (probably late in date). 3 Work on the canvas was resumed only in 1895, and it became his last major painting to be completed. T. M. Rooke s studio diary records Burne-Jones agonising over the colour and tonal effects. On October 29, 1895, the artist had decided not to "put much colour into this — make the landscape melting grey, L'Amant rich black and Love a silvery thing — the figures would jump too much with full colour." 4 By May 9, 1896, he was painting a "deep tone over the previously grey landscape," but then lightened it on the advice of his son, Philip, who thought it looked "cold and miserable." 5 On its exhibition at the New Gallery in 1897, the critics also found it rather sombre (the Magazine of Art called it "painfully sub- dued"), but alleviated by a sweet sadness that was emphasised by Burne-Jones's quotation in the catalogue of lines by Swinburne, to whom the work was dedicated: Love that is first and last of all things made, The light that moving has mans life for shade. Writing in the Athenaeum, F. G. Stephens considered the figure of Love "physically of the somewhat feminine type we often find in [Burne-Jones's] work," but thought the counte- nance "strenuous, beautiful, even nobly cruel in his sympathy for the acolyte"; in contrast, the Pilgrim s "weariness is mani- fest, and his sufferings are so obvious as to detract from our sat- isfaction in his victory, should it come to pass." 6 The head of the Pilgrim is that of an Italian model named Giacinto; as John Christian has noted, "At one stage the figure was given a beard so that no one should mistake it for a woman, but this was removed before the picture was finished." 7 1. De Lisle 1904, p. 115. 2. See Frances Horner 1933 and "Sir John and Lady Horner," Abdy and Gere 1984, chap. 10. 3. There are seven other such sheets of studies: another in Birmingham (458'27) and six in the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff (see Arts Council 1975-76, no. 326). Having been put in, the birds proved some- thing of a nuisance to later retouching, as T. M. Rooke's studio diary records, on November 27, 1895: "(Taking out some of the work around Loves feet, finding a bird painted on the rocks there much in the way.) Bother that bird — damn the robins" (Lago 1981, p. 58). 4. Lago 1981, p. 51. Later that year he confessed: "But what between my extraordinary love of bright colour and my extraordinary love of dark colour and my extraordinary love of chiaroscuro and my extraordinary love of a hard clear line — among my many loves I get into difficulties" (ibid., p. 66, entry for December 12, 1895). 5. Ibid., p. 100. 6. Athenaeum, May 22, 1897, p. 686. 7. Arts Council 1975-76, p. 65.