Still from the sire the son shall hear Of stern strife, and carnage drear; Of Flodden's fatal field Where shivered was fair Scotland's spear And broken was her shield. [Walter Scott, Marmion] Flodden Field was commissioned by George Howard, the ninth Earl of Carlisle, to decorate the library at Naworth Castle. The design was for a bas-relief to be modelled by Sir J E Boehm in 1882. The Earl had chosen the subject because his ancestors had been present at the Battle of Flodden Field in 1513. George Howard had originally commissioned Burne-Jones to paint a triptych for the room. The artist had become so obsessed with his masterpiece, The Last Sleep of Arthur in Avalon, which it became apparent that he would never finish it and so Howard relinquished his claim and accepted Flodden Field alone, which had been commissioned at the same time. Burne-Jones would have had a variety of sources to work for the subject of the battle of Flodden Field. It is said that 'more poetry has been written about Flodden field than any other battle since the days of Homer.' The Battle was fought in an attempt by King James IV of Scotland to weaken the English forces in the approaching war between England and France. Thousands of human lives were sacrificed and King James himself was killed, 'every man fought with a resolution and stubbornness beyond what the single army could ordinarily accomplish...hour after hour every inch of ground was doggedly contested.' [James Robson] Burne-Jones and Morris were frequenters of George Howard's circle of friends and fellow painters, who included Alphonse Legros, Giovanni Costa and Guiseppe Mazzini. All of them stayed at Naworth Castle in Cumberland. As a wealthy man, Howard was able to commission many paintings and Burne-Jones and Morris undertook a number of other commissions for him including the decoration of his dining room at 1 Palace Green, Kensington, with the story of Cupid and Psyche. Manuscript illustration from fol. 048r Le roman de la rose Shelfmark: Bodleian Library MS. Douce 195 Holding Institution: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford Date Statement: 15th century, end Place of Origin: France Language: French, Middle (ca. 1400-1600) Catalogue Description: Catalogue of Western Medieval Manuscripts in Oxford Libraries Author: Guillaume de Lorris Jean de Meun Burne-Jones and Morris visited the Bodleian library to look at manuscripts while they were students, so that from an early age they were aware of this script.
George Howard commissioned in 1882 a scene of the Battle of Flodden. Commemorated in Sir Walter Scott's long narrative poem Marmion y the battle of 1513 ended an attempt by James IV of Scotland to weaken the forces of Henry VIII in advance of England's war with France. Within Burne-Jones's brilliantly stylized composition, James IV is seen falling mortally wounded on the right, while George's ancestor Thomas Howard leads the victorious charge. Burne-Jones would have been familiar with the celebrated battle scenes of Uccello and Michelangelo, and the linear pos- sibilities of massed ranks of horsemen or soldiers, with their spears and banners, were explored several times by the artist, from early ink drawings (cat. no. 6) and stained-glass designs (cat. no. 21) to the Holy Grail tapestry The Arming and Departure of the Knights (cat. no. 147) and the huge oil The Fall of Lucifer (1894; Lord Lloyd-Webber). In the most elaborate modello for The Sleep of Arthur in Avalon (dated 1894; Koriyama Museum of Art, Japan), two similar groups of bat- tling armies flank the central depiction of the wounded king, although this idea was taken no further. The unearthly cold blue tonality of the design echoes the Perseus series (cat. nos. 88-97), m whuJi four subjects were to be executed in wood and gesso. Flodden Field was also con- ceived as a painted plaster relief (preserved at Naworth Castle; another cast is in the Carlisle Art Gallery), carved by the sculptor Joseph Boehm, whom Burne-Jones greatly liked. It was finally dispatched in 1886, Burne-Jones exhorting Howard, who was a more-than-competent artist, "You will touch up Flodden in situ, won't you, finishing the banners, tip- ping objects with beautiful touches." 1 1. Quoted in Virginia Surtees, The Artist and the Autocrat: George and Rosalind Howard, Earl and Countess of Carlisle (Salisbury, 1988), p. 130.