One of the products advertised by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. in a circular of 1862 was "Painted Earthen- ware, including wall tiles with pictured subjects, figures or pat- terns." Morris had established the practice of importing white tin-glazed tiles from Holland, which could be painted in enamel and refired (several times, if necessary, for elaborate colors) in his stained-glass kiln. Early experiments included designs by Burne-Jones for a pair of tiles with Adam and Eve and a series of the heroines from Chaucer's "The Legend of Goode Wimmen" (see cat. no. 29), so the firm was fully pre- pared for a substantial commission from Birket Foster for large tile panels to stand above three bedroom fireplaces in his new house, The Hill, at Witley, Surrey. 1 The painting of the tiles was largely executed by Kate and Lucy Faulkner (sisters of Morris's partner Charles Faulkner), working from designs supplied by Burne-Jones. His account book includes numerous entries dating from 1862 to 1864 that relate to tiles, the significant ones being for September 30, 1862: "10 designs for Tiles Cinderella £7.10. o."; July 26, 1863: "Beauty & the Beast £6.0.0."; and January 1864: "To 10 designs of 'Sleeping Beauty' at the mean and unremunerative price of 30/- [shillings] ea[ch] £15.0.0." In addition to the overmantels, there are also figures in the fireplaces below complementing Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast. All three panels have sur- rounds offering the first recorded use of the swan-pattern tile, now attributed to Morris. Each set of tiles was repeated once within the next ten years (with some individual variants of Sleeping B eauty) ^ but none in such a spectacular manner as the originals. Despite his habitual complaint over receiving less than he deserved in payment, Burne-Jones must have taken enormous pleasure in constructing these visual narratives, which gave him valuable experience on which to draw when it came to devising more important series of paintings, such as Saint George and the Dragon (cat. nos. 31, 33, 34) and Cupid and Psyche (cat. nos. 4oa-l, 41, 42). There was also the sheer fun of it, pro- viding "a welcome outlet for his abounding humour, and in this form the stories of Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella took at his hands as quaint a shape as they wear in the pages of the Brothers Grimm of blessed memory." 2 As always in the artist's work, there are figure groups that resonate with previous inspiration or suggest refinements still to come: the musicians in the third scene of Cinderella derive from The Wedding Procession of Sir Degrevaunt (cat. no. n); the first scene of Beauty and the Beast prefigures the composition of Princess Sabra Drawing the Lot (cat. no. 33), from Saint George and the Dragon; and, most strikingly, the central image of Sleeping Beauty precisely foreshadows The Briar Wood (cat. no. 55), the first painting in the Briar Rose series of 1871-73. 1. For a full account of the Witley "fairytale narratives," see Myers and Myers 1996, pp. 28-59, including photographs of the panels in situ (figs. 53-55). 2. Memorials, vol. 1, p. 249; as the authors point out, only Sleeping Beauty was written by the brothers Grimm, Cinderella being by Charles Perrault and Beauty and the Beast by Madame de Beaumont.
'Beauty and the Beast', a rare and important Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. tile panel, designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones and hand-painted by Lucy Faulkner, depicting six scenes illustrating the fairy tale, each scene comprising two tiles, alternated with tiles of flowering and fruiting foliage, with a narrow central eight-tile narrative frieze designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones,'How there was a Prince who by enchantment was turned into a bear and how a merchant was made to bring to him his youngest daughter and how the Prince became a man again and married her', (various chips) three panels signed with artist's initials LJF, circa 1863. Christie's 1993
Among the products advertised in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.'s circular of 1862 is listed "Painted Earthenware, including wall tiles with pictured subjects, figures or patterns". The firm's most important commission for narrative tile panels dates from 1863-65, when the watercolourist, Birket Foster ordered three such panels, depicting 'Beauty & the Beast', 'Cinderella' and 'Sleeping Beauty' for his house at Witley, Surrey. Burne-Jones' account book has an entry for 26 July 1863 "set of subjects for tiles - Beauty & the Beast" and below, "ditto - two extra - #2" which refers to the designs for the panel for Witley, which is now in the collection of the William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow. Of the other two panels, the 'Sleeping Beauty' is in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and 'Cinderella' in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. The sketches by Burne-Jones for three of the Beauty & Beast subjects are in the Tate Gallery collection, London (cat.no.4351[1]). The surviving examples of Morris & Co. tiles from the 1860s vary in details of colouring and in the tiled surrounds with inscriptions. For the latter, two principal types seem to have been designed. The first, used for the Witley panels, consists of tiles with the 'Swan' pattern designed by Philip Webb. The second, as used in the example offered here, incorporates more prominent lettering and floral borders designed by Burne-Jones. The version of the 'Cinderella' panel now in the Berger Collection, California, has this sort of treatment, in which the narrative subject tiles are more integrated with the surrounds tiles than the versions with the 'Swan' surrounds. In the early years of the Morris firm, the tiles were painted by Charles Faulker, his sisters, Lucy and Kate, Georgiana Burne-Jones and the firm's foreman glass-painter, George Campfield. The best examples seem to have been painted by the Faulkner sisters and some are signed with Lucy's 'LJF' monogram. These are seen on both this example of Beauty & the Beast and that from Witley. With only a few exceptions, the early tiles were painted in low-temperature-firing enamels on Dutch glazed white blanks. In the case of several surviving tile panels, the enamels have deteriorated badly because of defective firing or problems inherent in the somewhat vulnerable process of over-glaze decoration. However, this example of Beauty & the Beast is in exceptionally good condition and shows no signs of deterioration either in the colours or in the 'relief' patterns used on some of the tiles. Interestingly, the panel differs somewhat from the panel of the same subject from Witley, at the William Morris Gallery. In the latter, the sequence of six two-tile scenes begins with 'Beauty and her sisters in an interior with their father' and ends with 'Beauty kissng the Beast who is transformed thereby into the Prince'. In this example offered, the sequence begins with 'The father confronting the Beast in his garden' and ends with 'The marriage of Beauty and the Prince'. This marriage scene seems to have been designed originally as part of the 'Sleeping Beauty' sequence and is used as the final scene in the Victoria & Albert panel from Witley.