Edward Coley Burne-Jones, and Charles Fairfax Murray - ST THEOPHILUS AND THE ANGEL: A LEGEND OF THE MARTYRDOM OF ST DOROTHEA

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt., A.R.A. (1833-1898) and Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919)

ST THEOPHILUS AND THE ANGEL: A LEGEND OF THE MARTYRDOM OF ST DOROTHEA 

signed and dated l.c.: E.B.J. 1863
watercolour and bodycolour
67 by 88cm., 26 by 34 1/2 in. 

Estimate

 

150,000 — 200,000

 

GBP

Burne-Jones represents in the present watercolour St Dorothea, or Dorothy, who was a virgin martyr who died in c. 304 at Caesarea in Cappadocia under the persecution of Dioceletian. Nothing is known of her life, and the circumstances of her sainthood are legendary. Nonetheless, she has always been remembered and loved, and her Christian Acts have been highly influential.

The subject of the present watercolour was described in the catalogue of the Burne-Jones memorial exhibition: 'As Dorothea was passing from her judges to the place of execution, Theophilus, the Protonotary, asked her why she would throw away the joys of this life for one of which no man was certain.' She replied 'that she should that day be with her bridegroom in the garden of Paradise.' Theophilus mocked her by asking that she should 'send him some of the fruits and roses of that same garden.' Then, 'after her death, as he was returning to the Courts of Law, there met him on the threshold an angel bearing a basket of fruit and flowers, who, saying, "My sister Dorothea sends these to thee from the place where she now is,"' then disappeared. The legend concludes: 'Theophilus, pondering all this, came at last to the true belief, and in it died.' In due course, Theophilus was himself martyred and sanctified.

The elements of the composition were described in the following terms: 'Scene on the Court of Execution; in the background is seen the Consul leaving the court and followed by the spectators, and the executioner standing near the block; on the right the body of the Saint is being borne away by attendants; and on the left, Theophilus, whilst leaving the court and looking back at the dead body, is met at the doorway by the angel with a basket of flowers.'

The subject of St Dorothea's martyrdom was often treated in Italian and German art through the centuries, but less frequently in England. She had been the inspiration of a tragedy by Philip Massinger and Thomas Dekker, entitled The Virgin Martyr (1622), which Burne-Jones may perhaps have known. However, the most likely explanation for Burne-Jones's adoption of the theme is the exchange of ideas with Algernon Charles Swinburne, with whom in the early 1860s Burne-Jones was on terms of close friendship. Swinburne's poem 'St Dorothy' was included in the volume Poems and Ballads (first series), which was published (with a dedication to Burne-Jones) in 1866. Swinburne's poem describes the moment depicted in Burne-Jones's watercolour:

And when they came upon the paven place
That was called sometime the place amorous
There came a child before Theophilus
Bearing a basket, and said suddenly:
Fair sir, this is my mistress Dorothy
That sends you gifts; and with this he was gone.
[...]
Then cried they all that saw these things, and said
It was God's doing, and was marvellous.
And in brief while this knight Theophilus
Is waxen full of faith, and witnesseth
Before the king of God and love and death,
For which the king bade him presently
A gallows of a goodly piece of tree
This Gabalus hath made to hang him on.
Forth of this world lo Theophile is gone
With a wried neck, God give us better fare
Than this that hath a twisted throat to wear;
But truly for his love God hath him brought
There where his heavy body grieves him nought
Nor all the people plucking at his feet;
But in his face his lady's face is sweet,
And through his lips her kissing lips are gone:
God send him peace, and joy of such an one.'
CHARLES A. SWINBURNE

William Morris also treated the subject of the martyrdom of St Dorothy, in a verse narrative written for, but not eventually included in, The Earthly Paradise, published in 1868-70.

This watercolour is the second version of the subject by Burne-Jones. The first was exhibited in 1867, at the Old Water-Colour Society, and later appeared at both the retrospective and the memorial exhibitions of Burne-Jones's works at the New Gallery, in 1892-93 and 1898-99. Tragically, the drawing was destroyed when the house of Alice Street – the daughter of the architect George Edmund Street – in Somerset Place in Bath, was hit by German bombing in 1942. An illustration of it is shown in the catalogue of the Burne-Jones exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1998 (p. 85, illustrated p. 84).

The present watercolour seems to have been commenced in the latter part of 1866, when the original was still in Burne-Jones's studio. Work on the replica was done in the first instance by Burne-Jones's assistant Charles Fairfax Murray (who had first been employed in November 1866), as is demonstrated by a note made by Murray at the time, which states that the first task he was given was to begin a 'watercolour copy of the Dorothy – the original picture being still unfinished' (MS Birmingham City Art Gallery).

Burne-Jones himself seems to have taken over the task of completing the replica, and the work is listed by both Malcolm Bell and Fortunée de Lisle as a replica from his hand and is dated by each to 1868. The present second version of the subject was also included in the list of his own works that Burne-Jones kept in a notebook (now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge). For the year 1868, Burne-Jones recorded that he had 'made a copy of Dorothy for Mr Kitchen [sic]'. CSN