In the embroidery (cat. no. 72) the poet reaches out to touch the vision of the rose, represented by a full-length figure inside a flowering bush. Burne-Jones must have been dissatisfied with this idea, since the revised large-scale draw- ing presents a more visionary treatment of the rose, as a beau- tiful but disembodied head at the centre of a perfect, outsize rosebud. This is more in keeping with the spirit of the Chaucerian poem, in which the narrator is deterred from grasping the rose for fear of harm from its protective thorns. The drawing (cat. no. 80) has acquired the title L'Amant, which, while it derives from the Chaucer Romaunt of the Rose, pertains to a later part of the story, in which the poet debates the nature of love with Reason. After the completion of the Holy Grail series, Morris & Company may have intended to embark on another cycle of tapestries reproducing Burne-Jones's major designs for the Romaunt of the Rose. The only two subjects to be woven, how- ever, were both executed after Burne -Jones's death: The Heart of the Rose (also known as The Pilgrim in the Garden), in 1901, and Love Leading the Pilgrim, in 1909. 1 The tapestry gives a splendid re-creation of the colour never imparted to this subject on canvas, but Burne-Jones would probably not have approved of the addition of decorative lilies in the foreground, unmis- takably the work of the firm's later chief designer, John Henry Dearie (1860-1932). 1. See Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery 1981, pp. 63, no— n. A sec- ond version of The Heart of the Rose is at Rhodes House, Oxford, while two tapestries were made of Love and the Pilgrim: the first, of 1909, is in the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery (52'12).
The motif of the wall hanging "The Pilgrim in the Garden" by the English painter Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) comes from a medieval novel that describes a dream: The narrator has been admitted to a wonderful garden, where he sees numerous allegorical figures and the god of love meets and falls in love with a rose blossom. However, hostile powers prevent him from picking the rose and deny access to it through rose bushes. But the god of love helps and so the poet, who is referred to here as a pilgrim, is able to win the rose. The Old French novel is known in England as the "Romanaunt of the Rose" and was particularly prized by the Pre-Raphaelites. Burne-Jones has addressed this issue on several occasions. First he designed together with William Morris, responsible for the ornamental frame, for Rounton Grange, Northallerton, an embroidered frieze with five scenes, the last of which largely corresponds to the later tapestry. In 1881 Burne-Jones made a pencil drawing on the subject, which then served as a study for a painting begun in 1889. While in the embroidery a young girl is embraced by rose branches, the later solution shows a blossomed rose in whose open leaves a girl's head is sleeping.
