Frances Graham was probably the most important woman in Burne-Jones s life after his wife (cat. no. 116), his daugh- ter (cat. no. 117), and Maria Zambaco, the Greek beauty with whom he conducted a tempestuous affair in the late 1860s (cat. no. 49). She was certainly the most important of the young women with whom he enjoyed sentimental but platonic rela- tionships in his later years. As for Frances Graham, in old age she described him as "my greatest friend for all my grown-up life," who "poured into my lucky lap all the treasures of one of the most wonderful minds that ever was created." 1 Born in 1858, Frances was the fourth of the eight children of Burne-Jones's staunchest and most sympathetic patron, William Graham (fig. 70). A wealthy India merchant and Liberal Member of Parliament for Glasgow, Graham was a passionate collector, focusing his attention on the early Italian masters and the two modern artists whom he recognised as their heirs, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Burne-Jones. Frances shared his interests, and as soon as she was old enough she would accompany him on visits to painters' studios. In the late 1860s she frequently found herself at Rossetti's house in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, so romantic and mysterious, and boasting a menagerie in the garden. Rossetti would read them his "House of Life" sonnets, soon to be published In his Poems of 1870, and in 1869, when Frances was eleven, he drew her as "The Lady of the Window" in Dante s Vita Nuova. 2 Graham had been attracted to Burne-Jones's work as early as 1864, when he first saw it at the Old Water-Colour Society, and he had bought his first examples during the next few years (see cat. no s. 30, 63). It was not, however, until about 1873, when she was fifteen, that her father took her to visit the artist at The Grange. At first, she tells us in her reminiscences, Time Remembered (1933), she "thought it rather dull" after the excite- ments of Cheyne Walk, but she soon changed her mind. Burne-Jones, she recalled, was then a man of forty, just approaching his full fame, which he reached some ten or fifteen years later. ... He generally came twice a week to our house [in Grosvenor Place, Belgravia] to dine, and his company was most fas- cinating. He had that acute and retentive memory that Lombroso says is characteristic of all great men, and no women. All the books he had ever read (and they were innumerable) remained clear and deeply cut in his mem- ory, and could be drawn upon at will. Scott he read through every year, and Dickens he quoted continually. ... It was wonderful to hear him talk of Italy, where he had been very little, and very seldom, but he could describe the cities and churches, and their treasures, as if his life had been spent there - as indeed his spiritual life was. He said to me once: "I was born in a little city of the Apennines, and my name was Edouardo della Francesca, but afterwards Buon Giorno, for the welcome that was given me." 3 It would be easy to dismiss the relationship between the young girl and the "man of forty, just approaching his full fame" as a classic case of teenage infatuation, but there was more to it than that. Frances was not a great beauty; her features were rather heavy, as a friend perhaps recognized when, in an image inspired by her father's collecting, he called her "the Botticelli." 4 But it was her strength of character, her intellec- tual curiosity, and her depth of sympathetic understanding that Burne-Jones appreciated. She was soon one of his closest confidants. Herbert Asquith, the future Prime Minister, whose son was to marry her daughter Katharine, wrote to her after the artist's death in 1898: "I can hardly imagine anything that could tear a greater gap in your life or create such a breach between the future and the past. He gave you always of his best, and it must be some solace to you to remember that up to the end you above all others lightened and enriched his difficult life." 5 This haunting and mesmerising portrait dates from 1879 and may well, like the Orpheus piano (cat. no. 125), have been commissioned by the sitters father to mark her twenty-first birthday. It seems to be connected with a mysterious reference in Burne-Jones's work record for this year, "portrait of Frances Graham and her sister," which was presumably a double por- trait of Frances and Agnes. No such picture is known, and it is conceivable that the present picture is a fragment, salvaged by the artist from a larger canvas, with other parts of which he was dissatisfied. Whatever the case, it is the only known painted likeness of Frances by Burne-Jones. Other likenesses exist, the majority also dating from the late 1870s, but they are either pencil drawings or the heads of figures in subject pictures - the nymph on the extreme right in The Call of Perseus (cat. no. 88) and one of the damsels in The Golden Stairs (cat. no. 109). [JC] 1. Horner 1933, pp. 16, 104. 2. Private collection; Virginia Surtees, The Paintings and Drawings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Oxford, 1971), vol. 1, p. 165, no. 318; Horner 1933, illus. facing p. 22. 3. Horner 1933, pp. 8, 104-5. 4. Abdy and Gere 1984, p. 128. 5. Horner 1933, pp. 110-11.
By an extraordinary coincidence this sale contains two major Pre-Raphaelite portraits with romantic associations in which the sitters are aged twenty-one. If Edith Waugh fell in love with Holman Hunt as a young girl and eventually married him, as his second wife, in the teeth of intense family opposition and social prejudice (see lot 160), then Frances Graham was probably the most important woman in Burne-Jones's life after his wife Georgiana, his daughter Margaret, and Mary Zambaco, the Greek beauty with whom he conducted a passionate affair in the late 1860s. She was certainly the most important of the young women with whom he enjoyed romantic yet platonic relationships in later life. Born in 1858, she was the fourth of the eight children of his staunchest and most sypathetic patron, William Graham. A wealthy India merchant and liberal MP for Glasgow, Graham had a passionate devotion to art, not the least diminished by his strict Presbyterian faith. He bought pictures on a princely scale, but his greatest love was the early Italian masters and the Pre-Raphaelites, especially Rossetti and Burne-Jones, whom he recognised as their heirs. In Burne-Jones's case this undoubtedly played a major part in his development, encouraging him to think in Italianate terms, knowing that his work would be seen in the context of Graham's Old Masters. Graham had a special fondness for pictures of a romantic Giorgionesque type, and it is no accident that many of his Burne-Joneses conformed to this - pictures such as Green Summer, Le Chant d'Amour, Laus Veneris, and the early Briar Rose series. A year before Graham's death in 1885, Gladstone appointed him a trustee of the National Gallery. His collection was sold in a two-day sale at Christie's in April 1886. Frances shared her father's interests. Together they would visit artist's studios, often going in the late 1860s to Rossetti's house in Cheyne Walk. He would read them his House of Life sonnets, and in 1869, when Frances was eleven, he drew her as 'The Lady of the Window' in the Vita Nuova. She later reproduced the drawing (private collection) in her memoirs, Time Remembered (1933). When, about 1874, her father took to going to Burne-Jones's house, The Grange, in North End Road, Fulham, she at first 'thought it rather dull', but it was not long before she changed her mind. Burne-Jones 'was then a man of forty', she recalled, 'just approaching his full fame, which he reached some ten or fifteen years later. ... He generally came twice a week to our house [in Grosvenor Place] to dine, and his company was most fascinating. ... He was one of the wittiest and jolliest of talkers'. Burne-Jones for his part was equally taken with her. She was not a great beauty, her features being rather heavy; friends called her 'the Botticelli', although this probably reflected her father's taste as much as her own appearance. But it was her strength of mind, her intellectual curiosity, and her depth of sympathetic understanding that Burne-Jones valued, and she was soon one of his closest confidants. Herbert Asquith wrote to her after his death in 1898: 'I can hardly imagine anything that could tear a greater gap in your life or create such a breach between the future and the past. He gave you always of his best, and it must be some solace to you to remember that up to the end you above all others lightened and enriched his difficult life'. If Frances was 'fascinated' by Burne-Jones's conversation, she also inspired some of his best letters. Many of these are quoted in Time Remembered and in Lady Burne-Jones's Memorials of her husband (1904), while a delightful series addressed to Frances and her younger sister Agnes (later Lady Jekyll) when the Grahams were travelling in Italy in 1876, telling them what to see on the basis of his own four visits to the country at earlier dates, was published by Francis Russell in Apollo in 1978 (vol. CVIII, pp. 424-7). Needless to say, Burne-Jones's art was also at the service of his Egeria. 'Many a patient design went to adorning Frances' ways', he told Ruskin, who was similarly smitten, in 1883, 'Sirens for her girdle, Heavans and Paradises for her prayer-books, Virtues and Vices for her necklace-boxes - ah! the folly of me from the begining'. The greatest artistic monument to their friendship is the famous 'Orpheus' piano (private collection), commissioned by Graham for his daughter in 1879, which Burne-Jones both designed and decorated; but there were many other tributes - illuminated books, designs for needlework, a painted jewel-casket, and a charming design for shoes (repr. Abdy and Gere, op.cit., p. 129). Perhaps the gift which most perfectly expressed their relationship was a Valentine card which her friend Mary Gladstone, not without envy, recorded her receiving in 1875: 'Frances got such a beauty from Mr Burne-Jones - a big picture of Cupid dragging a maiden through all the meshes of love'. Frances also appears in several of her admirer's pictures. She is the nymph in the far right in The Arming of Perseus (Fig. 1), one of the Perseus series commissioned by Arthur Balfour in 1875; and she is one of a number of girls in the artist's circle who are seen descending The Golden Stairs (1880; Tate Gallery), doing much by their well-publicised presence to give the picture its unique and influential status as an icon of the Aesthetic movement. In 1883 Frances married (Sir) John Horner (1842-1927), a barrister who had inherited the family estate of Mells Park, Somerset, nine years earlier. He became High Sheriff of the county in 1885, and was created KCVO on his retirement in 1907. For a time after her marriage Frances saw less of Burne-Jones, but the friendship soon renewed its course, lasting until Burne-Jones's death and remaining of vital importance to Frances until her own death in 1940. In the 1880s she became a leading light in the coterie known as 'The Souls'. Indeed Lady Paget called her the 'High Priestess' of the set, a tribute not least to her close relationship with the artist who above all was the arbiter of their taste. Like many of the circle, the Horners were to suffer grieviously in the Great War, losing their son Edward at the battle of Cambrai in 1917, as well as their son-in-law Raymond Asquith. Edward had modelled for one of Burne-Jones's last paintings, The Prioress's Tale (Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington), exhibited at the New Gallery in 1989. The study was sold in these rooms on 2 November 1990, lot 169. Several portrait drawings of Frances herself survive. One was included in the Arts Council's Burne-Jones Exhibition of 1975-6, no. 235; another, in profile, is illustrated in Abdy and Gere, op.cit., p. 130. Both are more or less contemporary with our picture, as was a double portrait of Frances and her sister Agnes which Burne-Jones undertook in 1879, possibly to mark the elder sister's twenty-first birthday. The picture is referred to in Burne-Jones's autograph work-list (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge,) as 'Portrait of Frances Graham and her sister'; but if it survives, it has not been traced. Thus at present our picture is the only painted likeness of Frances by Burne-Jones, as distinct from the drawn studies. Burne-Jones was a reluctant portraitist. 'I do not easily get portraiture', he wrote, 'and the perpetual hunt to find in a face what I like, and leave not what mislikes me, is a bad school for it.' By 'what I like' he did not only mean what conformed to his very strong sense of beauty, although this was important; he also believed that portraiture should be 'the expession of character amd moral quality, not of anything temporary, fleeting, accidental'. It is not surprising that he was often most successful when painting relatives or friends. Frances Graham was an eminently suitable though no doubt a challenging subject, and in his portrait of her he seeks to achieve his ideal. The eyes were always of great importance in his faces, and he focuses on hers, appropriately since they were one of her most remarkable features. Margot Asquith is said to have called them 'ghost eyes', and faced with this portrait, we feel that we know what she meant. Deliberately understated and in no way 'obvious', the picture gradually comes to have an almost hynoptic effect. Comparisons can be made with other portraits by Burne-Jones, notably that of Lady Windsor, another 'Soul' (private collection; repr. Abdy and Gere, op.cit., p.122), although this is later (1893) and a much more formal full-length. Outside his oeuvre, however, the picture has no real parallel in Victorian portraiture, finding its true context in international Symbolism. The truth of this is suggested by the fact that a similar and almost contemporary Burne-Jones portrait, that of Lady Frances Balfour, was bought in 1991 by the Musée des Beaux-Arts at Nantes. Certain portraits by Fernand Khnopff come particularly close, and it is interesting that Khnopff had recently become a devotee of Burne-Jones, admiring the pictures that he had sent to the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1878. In the 1890s they would meet in London and exchange drawings. The study that Burne-Jones gave Khnopff was sold in these Rooms on 5 November 1993, lot 127. The picture has remained relatively unknown. It was not exhibited in Burne-Jones's lifetime, although it did appear at the memorial exhibition at the New Gallery in 1898-9. Described simply as 'A Portrait Sketch', possibly a form of anonymity requested by the bereaved sitter, it was lent by Sit Kenneth Muir Mackenzie, the husband of her sister Amy. It then disappeared for many years, only surfacing after the Arts Council's Burne-Jones Exhibition of 1975-6. After Time Remembered, an essential source for anyone interested in Burne-Jones, the best account of Frances's life and friendship with the artist is to be found in Jane Abdy and Charlotte Gere, The Souls, 1984, Chapter 10. The subject is also treated in Lord David Cecil's Visionary and Dreamer, 1969, and Penelope Fitzgerald's biography of Burne-Jones, 1975.
