“I rose up in the silent night; I made my dagger sharp and bright”
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, English, 1833 - 1898
Geography:
Made in England, Europe
Date:
c. 1859-1860Medium:
Pen and black ink with scratching out over graphite on wove paperDimensions:
Sheet: 5 x 5 3/4 inches (12.7 x 14.6 cm)Curatorial Department:
Prints, Drawings, and PhotographsObject Location:
1991-50-1Credit Line:
Purchased with the Alice Newton Osborn Fund, 1991
Made in England, Europe
Date:
c. 1859-1860Medium:
Pen and black ink with scratching out over graphite on wove paperDimensions:
Sheet: 5 x 5 3/4 inches (12.7 x 14.6 cm)Curatorial Department:
Prints, Drawings, and PhotographsObject Location:
Currently not on view
Accession Number:1991-50-1Credit Line:
Purchased with the Alice Newton Osborn Fund, 1991
Label:
This drawing illustrates a stanza from a short poem of 1833 by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, entitled "The Sisters." The medieval costumes and interior setting reflect the pre-Raphaelite taste for art of that period and enhance the intense emotion of the poet's Gothic tale.
This drawing illustrates a stanza from a short poem of 1833 by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, entitled "The Sisters." The medieval costumes and interior setting reflect the pre-Raphaelite taste for art of that period and enhance the intense emotion of the poet's Gothic tale.
Explore the Collections
Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the CollectionsEdward Coley Burne-Jones was a second-generation member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which had been founded by English painters and poets in 1848 to promote a return to the innocence and honesty that they found in Italian art before the time of Raphael (1483-1520). Pre-Raphaelite artists favored Romantic literary and poetic themes, which they rendered with graphic clarity and in minute detail. Often they made small finished drawings like this one for presentation to their friends. Burne-Jones's drawing is based on a quotation from Alfred Lord Tennyson's "The Sisters," a romantic ballad about a young woman's vengeful murder of her sister's lover. Treating the tragic tale as a somber meditation on the act of murder rather than as a narrative, Burne-Jones evokes the style of early Renaissance drawings through his precise penwork and his compressed, planar arrangement of figures and setting, as well as through his use of period costumes and furnishings. Innis Howe Shoemaker, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections (1995), p. 227.
