Painted, according to the artist's own work record, in 1865 but dated 1866, this picture marks a development from Green Summer of 1864 (fig. 63) and Le Chant d'Amour of 1865 (cat. no. 30). Like them, it has no real subject, seeking to evoke a mood father than to illustrate a story, and in common with Le Chant d 'Amour it depends partly on music to set the emotional tone. It differs from its predecessors, however, in being inspired not by the Giorgionesque convention but by classical Greek sculpture, especially the Parthenon frieze in the British Museum. Unlike most artists of the period, for whom drawing from the antique was the bedrock of their student training, Burne- Jones had come to classical sculpture comparatively late. "I know," he wrote in 1880, "that if there had been one cast from ancient Greek sculpture ... to be seen in Birmingham when I was a boy, I should have begun to paint ten years before I did." 1 In fact such casts did exist, having been given by Sir Robert Lawley to the local Society of Arts on its founding in 1821, and Burne-Jones must have seen them when he attended evening classes at the School of Design in the late 1840s. But they evi- dently made no impact on him, the schools uninspired teaching and the lack of any taste in his own home surroundings effect- ively rendering them invisible. Nor did his meeting with Rossetti in 1856 bring enlightenment. His hero actively discouraged him from studying the antique on the grounds that "such study came too early in a man's life and was apt to crush out his individuality." 2 In fact it was not until the late 1850s, as a result of a deliber- ate campaign to counteract Rossetti s influence on his infatu- ated young followers, that Burne-Jones began to take a serious interest in Greek sculpture. Ruskin was urging him to look at the Elgin Marbles in an attempt to inculcate the quality of "repose" by which he set such store, and which he found so sadly lacking in the medievalising excesses of Rossetti s circle; similar advice came from another mentor, G. F. Watts, who wanted him to improve his drawing. Watts had the most pro- found respect for the Elgin Marbles, kept casts of them in his studio, and based his own style on a dual allegiance to Phidias and Titian. Yet even without these promptings Burne-Jones would probably have moved toward classicism in the 18 60s; or rather, the ideas of Ruskin and Watts were strands in a gen- eral development that affected the whole field of idealist figure painting in England at this period, touching the Pre- Raphaelites no less than those young artists — Leighton, Poynter, Whistler, Albert Moore — who had had greater or lesser contact with the Continental academic tradition. Response to the ancient world varied widely, from the purest Aestheticism of Whistler and Moore to the anecdotal his- toricism of Poynter and Alma-Tadema, the latter having set- tled in London in 1870. Burne-Jones, with his Giorgio nes que background, was naturally inclined to the Aesthetic approach, and for several years in the late 1860s his work had a close affinity with that of Whistler and Moore. Though the Ruskin libel trial would later divide them (see p. 195), he certainly knew Whistler at this date, and probably Moore as well. Burne-Jones's sketchbooks at this period are full of copies after the antique, some taken from books such as Ennio Quirino Visconti's Museo Pio-Clementino (1782-1807) and Pierre Bouillons Musee des Antiques (1821-27), others from the sculp- ture in the British Museum, which was conveniently close to the rooms that he and his family occupied at 62 Great Russell Street from 1861 to the end of 1864. 3 There are many reflections of this study in his current work, but the chief example is The Lament, with its friezelike composition, its pale, chalky colors, creating a sense of low relief, and its figures expressing a mood of restrained sadness, like those on a Greek stela or gravestone. In fact, as so often with Burne-Jones, the line from source to finished picture can be traced with revealing clarity. One of his sketchbook copies is taken from the seated figure of Ares (Mars) on the Parthenon frieze. The god of war is shown seated fac- ing left, with his hands clasped on his knees, and he clearly inspired an early study for the young woman on the right in the painting, in which she assumes an upright pose. In further studies and the painting itself she bends forward in an attitude more expressive of grief, although she retains the clasped hands of the Greek original. The Elgin frieze, whether the groups of seated deities or the Panathenaic procession, was also the crucial classical source for Whistler and Moore, and it has already been noted that The Lament finds many parallels in their work (see p. 114). The most striking are The Marble Seat by Moore (fig. 74), his first fully Aesthetic picture, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1865, and Whistler's Symphony in White, No. j (fig. 75), begun that year and exhibited at the Academy in 1867. The three pic- tures are contemporary; all depend, to one degree or another, on the same source; and although the Moore is lost, and now known only from an old photograph, it is safe to say that all were carefully orchestrated colour harmonies in a light key. One of the most interesting points of comparison is the way in which Burne-Jones and Whistler both introduce sprays of foliage and blossom at the right in their pictures, partly for compositional purposes but also to help create the desired chromatic effect. It is not impossible that Burne-Jones, like Whistler, had Japanese art in mind at this point, thus seeking the synthesis between classical and Far Eastern art on which Aestheticism was so largely based. The Lament was not exhibited at the Old Water-Colour Society until 1869. It was listed as A Lament in the catalogue, and this may have been Burne-Jones s preferred title, even though he refers to it as The Lament in his autograph work record. Few of the critics noticed it, their attention focused instead on The Wine of Circe (fig. 24), a much larger and more eye-catching picture that was generally regarded as a landmark in the artist s development. The Lament was bought by John Hamilton Trist, a Brighton wine merchant whose collection also included one of Albert Moore's most Aesthetic works, Pomegranates (1866; Guildhall Art Gallery, London), some twenty pictures by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Arthur Hughes, and examples of Rossetti, Madox Brown, Leighton, Alma- Tadema, and others. Trist's pictures were sold in 1892, and The Lament subsequently belonged to the decorative artist Sir Frank Brangwyn (18 67-1943), an omnivorous collector with Pre-Raphaelite connections, since he had begun his career working for William Morris. A later version of the picture exists, smaller, in oils, and with a landscape background (private collection). [jc] 1. Memorials, vol. 2, p. 100. 2. Ibid., p. 149. 3. Six of the sketchbooks are in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (nos. E.1-1955-E.6-1955).
The picture is Burne-Jones's most considered essay in the prevailing classical style of the later 1860s. The mood of restrained sadness, the chalky colours (characteristic of other paintings of 1866), the simple outlines and low relief of the figures all point to this conclusion. The design owes much to Burne-Jones's study of the Parthenon frieze in the British Museum, and in fact a drawing at Birmingham for the figure on the right (207'04) showing the figure sitting upright, is very close to the figure of Ares in the group of seated deities (Parthenon frieze, slab IV, fig.27) which he copied about 1864 in a sketch book in the Victoria and Albert Museum. (E.3-1955). The Lament though dated 1866 was largely painted in 1865. There are numerous studies for The Lament and a later oil version was sold at Christie's (4 July 1967 lot 57) which has a different background.
Signed and dated EBJ 1866 as though carved into the stone work lower left The stringed instrument designed by the artist , has its first appearance in this painting and remained a studio prop until his death, as it appears twice in Arthur in Avalon. A photograph of it is included in the Easter Art Annual of the Art journal on p 30 fig 54.