The last in the artist's sequence of elaborate pen-and-ink drawings, Childe Roland depicts the hero of a poem by Robert Browning (1812-1889), "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," published in Men and Women in 1855. Browning was popular with the Pre-Raphaelite circle, and Burne-Jones was introduced to him by Rossetti in 1856. Burne-Jones regarded Browning as "the deepest and intensest of all the poets," 1 and Rossetti reported to the poet himself in 1856 that "Childe Roland" was read to the pupils at the Working Men's College (where Ruskin, Rossetti, and Burne-Jones all taught) on the grounds that "it would do them good, whether they under- stood it all at first hearing or not." 2 The drawing is not so much an illustration of the verse as a character study of the introspective knight, who in the last line of the poem comes to the enigmatic dark tower, announcing his arrival by blowing on the horn at the gate. His somber armor — an exercise in burnished metal that would be refined in the Saint George and the Dragon series (cat. nos. 31, 33, 34) and Chant d'Amour (cat. nos. 30, 84) — matches the dark mood of the poem, surprisingly and effectively relieved in Burne-Jones's image by a riotous host of sun- flowers, which were doubtless familiar to him from the garden of Red House. Many years later he enthused to Frances Horner over the seduc- tive characteristics of the plant: "Do you know sunflowers? How they peep at you and look brazen sometimes and proud — and others look shy and some so modest that up go their hands to hide their brown blushes . . . and do you know their backs? — the busiest back of any live crea- tures. I could draw them for ever, and should love to sit for days drawing them. ... It is so right to make them talk mottoes; they all look as if they were thinking." Burne-Jones himself recorded that the draw- ing belonged to Ruskin, and it may have been a commission. It has been surmised that it was one of the many works lent by Ruskin to Winnington Hall, the girls' school in Cheshire whose work he patronised in the late 1850s, and that he may have lost claim to it when the schools headmistress, Miss Bell, went bankrupt in 1873. 4 It later passed into the collection of the bookseller and publisher F. S. Ellis, who issued Morris's Earthly Paradise (1868-70) and later edit* ed the Kelmscott Chaucer (cat. no. 154). 1. Memorials, vol. 1, p. 153. 2. Letter to Robert Browning, February 6, 1856, in Rossetti, Letters, vol. 1 (1965), p. 286. 3. Horner 1933, p. 119. 4. Christian 1984a, p. 124.
Signed and dated "EJB 1861" in cartouche lower left.and inscibed on scroll "CHILDE;ROLAND;TO;THE;DARK;TOWER;CAME;" Fitzwilliam work list 2 1861 Pen and ink Child (sic) Rowlande. Ruskin Boyce Diaries 1861 16 March ... Spent the evening with Jones and his wife. ... Made a rough pencil sketch of Jones whilst he was at work on his pen and ink drawing of Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. and whilst his wife was singing old English ditties. "Do you know the faces of sunflowers? How they peep at you and look brazen sometimes and proud — and others look shy and some so modest that up go their hands to hide their brown blushes, and some have bees for brooches in most admirable taste, tinted like themselves, deep brown and gold- and do you know their backs? — the busiest back of any live creatures. I could draw them for ever, and should love to sit for days drawing them... It is so right to make them talk mottoes; they all look as if they were thinking; the don't like to grow draggled at all and hang their heads low at the first sign of their toilette failing. When a yellow petal casts a green shade on the heart of them it is as good as fairyland to look at. The begin to0 grow weary of time today for the day is heavy with wet, and last night it lightened and darkened horribly with thunder, so today they all stand and look scared for their Lord the Sun has gone away for two days and they don't know what to worship " letter to Frances Horner quoted in Time Remembered 1933 p 119 -120