The Radical Vision Of Edward Burne-Jones

This bold reassessment of the nineteenth-century British painter and decorative artist Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) highlights his radical defiance of the Victorian era.

Challenging the dominant characterisation of Edward Burne-Jones as an escapee who retreated from the modern world into imaginary realms of his own creation, this book demonstrates that the artist was engaged in a fundamentally radical defiance of the age, protesting against imperial aggression, capitalist economic inequality, and environmental destruction in the wake of the Industrial Revolution.

The first scholarly monograph devoted exclusively to Burne-Jones since 1973, this book offers a thorough re-examination of Burne-Jones's work. Although the artist was often described as a painter, it refocuses Burne-Jones's practice in the decorative arts, demonstrating that he consistently pushed the boundaries of artistic media, in line with wider debates about the role of the arts in the nineteenth century.