Filomela

134,6 x 67,3 cm

Pencil, watercolour and touches of white on paper.

When put in the context of the close bonds of friendship and mutual esteem that existed between Ruskin and Burne-Jones, the thematic choice is easily understood. Burne-Jones saw in Ruskin a father figure, especially in an artistic sense.   Ruskin finds in classical culture the best vehicle for communicating the image of an ideal world. This is especially evident with regards to female heroines who are admirable exemplars of the values aspired to.

The protagonist of this drawing is Philomela, sister of Procne: the latter has married Tereus, the belligerent king of Thrace, who is reunited to his wife after five years apart. Tereus lusts after Philomela and after raping her, cuts out her tongue, thus ensuring her silence. Philomela proceeds to weave her story into a piece of textile. In Burne-Jones’ drawing, she points to her lips to emphasize the loss of speech and clasps a tapestry in her hands – a manifesto to her suffering. On the far left of the cloth she is seen bidding farewell to her father Pandion, King of Greece. Tereus looks toward her foreshadowing the violence he intends to commit. To the right of the tree, which serves as a pivot between the two moments of the story, Tereus leads Philomela to prison. With a timid nod, the heroine brings her hand to her mouth: any hint of the gory scene that follows is left to our imagination.

From the outset, this project was closely associated with Winnington Hall, a girls school in Cheshire funded by Ruskin in the late 1850s. Sewing was taught by Georgiana Macdonald, Burne-Jones’ wife, and the school’s principal was Margaret Bell. The girls at Winnington Hall were not only involved in weaving, but also apparently posed as models for the project. Georgiana herself may have posed for some figures, including Philomela. Women are here seen being both models in virtue narratives and in real life, skillfully using their hands to weave tapestries and lending their bodies as physical models.

The sketch for Burne-Jones’ tapestry  now in the Birmingham Art Gallery, dates from this early design phase. Ruskin was very pleased when he saw the drawings, and especially with the expressive rendering of Philomela, Medea, and Thisbe. He was dissatisfied, however, with the depiction of Dido and asked the artist to do her again, likely suggesting as models Annie Leadbeater or Amy Webster.

Despite great initial enthusiasm, the project  remained unfinished, as attested to in Georgiana Burne-Jones’ diaries.

The drawings were purchased by Ruskin and are now partly dispersed. In the lecture held in 1867 at the British Institute, Ruskin showed two preparatory drawings, Love leading Alcesti, Hypsipyle and Medea, now in the Ashmoleon Museum, Oxford; and Thisbe, mentioned again by Georgiana Burne-Jones in her writings and now in the William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow. Other drawings include the figure of Chaucer asleep in his study which is in the Ruskin Gallery, Bembridge, Isle of Wight, and Cleopatra now in a private collection. Like Philomela, these drawings are executed mainly in sepia with a focus on the figure. The only exception to this is Lucretia, which is in colour and has an architectural background. This work became a wedding gift to the merchant Charles Augustus Howell, a friend of Burne-Jones.  It is now in the Birmingham Art Gallery, Birmingham.

The drawing of Dido (whereabouts unknown) and other projected drawings, had probably not been started when the project was abandoned. We do know, however, that Burne-Jones had planned to complete all the heroines, not only because of the presence of the preparatory drawings, but also because of the use of the same visual designs he used in stained glass. Indeed, the stained glass versions were conceived in conjunction with the textiles. The glass versions had been designed as early as January 1864 for Birket Foster’s house in Witley and were repeated again in 1869 for the Combination Room at Peterhouse, Cambridge.

Some figures were also adapted for ceramic tiles, whilst the stories of the two heroines, Thisbe and Phyllis, were conceived independently as easel paintings. A screen was later made by Jane Morris for the Earl of Carlisle, using the same preparatory drawings.

When Ruskin died in 1900, some of the drawings, including Philomela, were inherited by his cousin and caregiver Joan Agnew Severn. She died in 1924, and three of them-Filomela, Cleopatra and Chaucer-appeared in the sale of Brantwood paintings and drawings that Sotheby’s held in London after the death of painter Arthur Severn in 1931. The Philomela was allegedly purchased by art historian Kenneth Clark, the future Lord Clark of Saltwood, director of the National Gallery in London (1934-45) and chairman of the Art Council, who lent it to the ‘Ruskin and his Circle’ exhibition held by the Arts Council of Great Britain (1953-60) in its St. James’s Square venue in 1964. Philomela’s drawing returned to Sotheby’s when his son, the Honorable Alan Clark, sold it in 1986.