Having failed to exhibit at the Grosvenor Gallery in 18 81, Burne-Jones returned in force in 1882, showing a total of nine works. The Mill was probably the most important, although The Tree of Forgiveness (cat. no. 114 ( sic WW 144)) and The Feast of Peleus (cat. no. 51) were also shown that year. The picture marks a return to a romantic and coloristic style after the severe, clas- sical manner, chalky or almost monochromatic in tone, that he had adopted in recent years for such pictures as the Pygmalion series (cat. nos. 8/a-d) and The Annunciation (cat. no. 104), both exhibited in 1879, and The Golden Stairs (cat. no. 109), which had followed in 1880. Indeed, this classical tendency persists in The Tree of Forgiveness, with its restricted palette and Michelangelesque nudes; and anyone comparing the picture with The Mill in 1882 might well have wondered if the artist was not in the grip of a stylistic identity crisis. The dilemma, stemming from earlier phases of ardent response to both Venetian and Florentine painting, was not to be resolved until he exhibited King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid (cat. no. 112) in 1884 and the first of the Perseus series in 1887-88. The Mill was started in 1870 (the date it bears) and worked on intermittently for twelve years. According to Burne-Jones's work record, it received attention in 1873, 1878, 1879, and 1881, and it was finished only shortly before its exhibition. Like so many of Burne-Jones's pictures, including the stylistically very different Golden Stairs, The Mill has no specific subject, the artist seeking rather to evoke a mood with the aid of music to set the emotional tone and give the composition its raison d'etre. While this tendency has many parallels within the con- text of the Aesthetic movement, notably with Walter Paters famous dictum that "all art constantly aspires towards the con- dition of music" and Whistler's habit of giving his pictures musical titles, Burne-Jones's references to music are more lit- eral than Whistler's and clearly introduce an element of symbolism. In fact, the particular mood he evokes in The Mill — that blend of tension, nostalgia, and regret inherent in a summer's evening as the shadows of twilight lengthen — was one that appealed to many Symbolist painters. Perhaps the obvious example is Memories (fig. 39), the masterpiece by Burne-Jones's Belgian friend Fernand KhnopfF that was exhibited in London in 1890; but certain early works by Alphonse Osbert (1857— 1939) and Henri Le Sidaner (1862-1939) also come to mind. The picture's lack of narrative content struck many who reviewed the Grosvenor exhibition. For F. G. Stephens, writ- ing in the Athenaeum, it was a "sumptuous and half-mystical idyll." 1 "It is hardly a picture that can be analysed, ..." wrote the art critic of the Times. "It is a work which has no counter- part in the actually existing order of things, but reflects its truth only from certain mental states, and so is true to feeling, though not to fact." 2 Henry James, in an article in the Atlantic Monthly, observed that its title seemed to have been chosen "simply ... to give it a label of some kind. ... It represents — but such a beginning is rash, for it would by no means be easy to say what it represents. Suffice it that three very pretty young women . . . are slowly dancing together in a little green garden, on the edge of a mill-pond. ... I have not the least idea who the young women are, nor what period of history, what time and place, the painter has had in his mind." Like the Timess critic, James recognized that the picture's real subject is a men- tal state, or perhaps rather a philosophical standpoint. "A whole range of feeling about life is expressed in Mr. Burne- Jones s productions. … His expression is complicated, trou- bled; but at least there is an interesting mind in it." 3 This fundamental truth, he felt, made much of the controversy about Burne-Jones essentially beside the point, and William Morris agreed. "I recollect," wrote the critic J. E. Phythian, "asking Morris … what Burne-Jones meant by [The Mill]. I got for answer something not much more articulate than a grunt." 4 The picture is not one of Burne-Jones's most overtly Italianate works, although some have seen it in this light. Henry James returns to the point time and again; the dancers wear "old Italian dresses," the picture in general is "an echo of early Italianism" and "impregnated with the love of Italy." When F. G. Stephens saw the picture again in the artist's ret- rospective exhibition at the New Gallery in the winter of 1892-93, he commented that the dancers were moving "with the robust grace of Signorelli." 5 But perhaps the most Italianate feature is the group of nude men bathing. They seem to echo figures in works by two artists whom Burne-Jones is known to have admired: Piero della Francesca's Baptism of Christ (1450s), which had entered the National Gallery, London, in 1861, and Michelangelo's famous composition The Battle of Cascina (1504), which he would have known through Marcantonio's engravings. The Mill is Burne-Jones's most elaborate expression of a motif that haunted his imagination, that of a group of build- ings — whether warehouses, mills, locks, or water gates — on a stretch of river. It seems likely that the attraction this had for him originated in the "terminal pilgrimages" to the burial place of Fair Rosamund at Godstowe which he made as an under- graduate at Oxford in the mid-i85os, locks being a feature of that part of the upper Thames along which he would have walked. 6 Certainly the motif first occurs in one of the illustra- tions to Archibald Maclaren's Fairy Family, which he made about the time he left Oxford in 1856 (cat. nos. 1-3). It reap- pears in The Wise and Foolish Virgins, a pen-and-ink drawing of 1859 (cat. no. 8); and then on a number of subsequent occa- sions, notably in The Mill and two works dating from the end of his career, Aurora (Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane), which was exhibited at the New Gallery in 1896, and one of the murals he painted to amuse his grandchildren in the nursery of his house at Rottingdean. 7 The fact that the background of Aurora was based on a sketch of a canal made during a family holiday in Oxford in 1867 tends to confirm that the city's waterways inspired Burne-Jones's general interest in the theme, and there are two interesting parallels that underline the point yet again. One is the series of landscapes which G. P. Boyce, his fellow artist and patron, painted in the late 1850s and early 1860s at such Thames-side villages as Streatley, Mapledurham, and Godstowe, the last of which we know he actually visited with Burne-Jones in March 1859. 8 The other parallel is provided by Burne-Jones's friend and follower J. R. Spencer Stanhope. He too made a feature of the lock or water- gate motif on a number of occasions, 9 and, like Burne-Jones, he was familiar with the Oxford countryside, having been an undergraduate at Christ Church as well as having contributed to the Oxford Union murals in 1857-58. The Mill was bought by Constantine Ionides, the autocrat- ic head of the large naturalized Greek family that, together with their many relatives and associates in the wider Anglo- Greek community, played such an important part in London's cultural life during the later nineteenth century. The tradition of patronage and involvement with the arts established by his father, Alexander, was followed by Constantine himself and his four younger brothers and sisters: Aglaia, Mrs. Coronio, who often helped Burne-Jones with dresses for his models and was a confidante of William Morris; Luke, a man whose private and professional life were often in turmoil but who was Burne-Jones's intimate friend; Alexander, who shared Constantine's passion for collecting and created one of the great Aesthetic interiors of the day (see cat. no. 103); and Chariclea, who married the musician Edward Dannreuther and supported him in promoting the work of Richard Wagner in England. Constantine, a wealthy stockbroker with a large house in Holland Villas Road, Kensington, formed a highly personal collection in the 1870s and 1880s and, by bequeathing it to the South Kensington (now Victoria and Albert) Museum on his death in 1901, ensured that, alone among the great collections formed in England during the Aesthetic period, it remains intact to this day. As well as major examples of Delacroix, Corot, Millet, Degas, Rossetti, Legros, and many others, it includes several works by Burne-Jones, of which The Mill is the most important. It was said in the family that the three dancing figures represented Aglaia Coronio, her cousin Maria Zambaco (cat. no. 49), and their close friend Marie Spartali (see cat. no. 121), a triumvirate of talent and beauty known throughout their circle as "the Three Graces." Constantine strongly disapproved when Burne-Jones conducted a tempes- tuous affair with Maria Zambaco in the late 1860s, though his patronage survived the strain this placed on their relationship. An etching of The Mill by Emile Sulpis (1856-1943) was published in 1899. 10 [JC] 1. Athenaeum (May 6, 1882), p. 575. 2. Times (London), May 8, 1882, p. 5. 3. James 1956, pp. 205-8. 4. Phythian 1908, p. 121. 5. Athenaeum (January 28, 1893), p. 128. 6. See Memorials, vol. 1, p. 97. 7. Reproduced respectively in Robin Ironside and John Gere, Pre- Raphaelite Painters (London, 1948), pi. 83, and Barbican Art Gallery 1989, p. 81. 8. See George Price Boyce (exh. cat., London: Tate Gallery, 1987), nos. 24-30, and Surtees 1980, p. 26, entry for March 6, 1859. 9. Fine Victorian Pictures, Drawings, and Watercolours, Christie's, November 13, 1992, note to lot 120 (Our Lady of the Water-Gate, by Stanhope). 10. Hartnoll 1988, pl. 10.
Burne-Jones was acquainted with the Ionides family by 1869 and the Mill was commissioned by Constantine Alexander Ionides. The three female models, also related to the family, were Aglaia Ionides, Marie Spartali, and Maria Zambaco (Burne-Jones was moreover involved with the latter). An undated letter from Burne-Jones at the NAL (86.WW.1) informed Constantine Alexander that the picture was nearly ready. According to his collection's inventory (private collection) Ionides paid £905 for the Mill on 21 April 1882. Bequeathed by Constantine Alexander Ionides, 1900.
"Mr Burne Jones's other large picture, which he has called, simply, we suppose, to give it a label of some kind, At the Mill, is in the opposite key. It represents - But such a beginning is rash, for it would be by no means easy to say what it represents. Suffice it being that three very pretty young women, in old Italian dresses, are slowly dancing together in a little green garden, on the edge of a mill-pond, on the further side of which several men, very diminutive figures, are about to enter, or about to quit, the bath. To the right, beneath a quaint loggia, a fourth young woman, the least successful of the group, is making music for her sisters. The color is deep, rich, glowing, exceedingly harmonious, and both in this respect and in its being, in feeling and expression, an echo of early Italianism, the picture has an extraordinary sweetness. It is very true that I have heard it called idiotic; but there is a sad want of good-humour in that. it is equally true that I have not the least idea who the young women are, nor what period of history, what time and place, the painter has had in his mind. His dancing maidens are exceedingly graceful, innocent, maidenly : they belong to the land of fancy, and to the hour of reverie! When one considers them, one really feels that there is a want of discretion and of taste in attempting to talk about Mr Burne Jones's pictures at all, much more in arguing and wrangling about them. They are there to care for if one will, and to leave to others if one cannot. The great charm of the work I have just mentioned is, perhaps, that to many persons it will seem impregnated with the love of Italy. If you have certain impressions, certain memories of that inestimable land, you will find it full of entertainment. I speak with no intention of irreverence when I say that I think it is delightfully amusing. It amuses me that it should be just as it is, - just as pointless as a twilight reminiscence, as irresponsible as a happy smile. The quaintly-robed maidens, moving together in measure, and yet seeming to stand still on the grass; the young men taking a bath just near them, and yet the oddity being no oddity at all ; the charming composition of the background, the picturesque feeling, the innocence, the art, the color, the mixture of originality and imitation, - all these things lift us out of the common. Sweet young girls of long ago, - no-one paints them like Mr Burne Jones. The only complaint I have to make of him is one cannot express one's appreciation of him without seeming to talk in the air". Stunners: Pre-Raphaelite Art from a Private American Collection, Christie's, 16 June 2015, p.39
Fitzwilliam Account Book: 1870 ... began the oil picture of the Mill 1873 ... worked on the Mill 1878 Worked on the Mill 1879 ... worked on Mill 1881 Worked on Mill 1882 Finished Mill. Grosvenor Notes May 1882: Henry Blackburn entry for cat no 175 p 51 : "Three maidens by a mill stream and buildings, dancing in a line, hand in hand; one man on the right playing on a wind instrument. Dark brown, blue, and greenish robes; in the background bathers and the wheels of a water-mill; a picture remarkable for strong qualities of colour; quiet and restful in express ion." Blackburn mistakenly describes the musician as a man, presumably elsewhere the figure is referred to as "Apollo". The genesis of the painting in 1870 ( the time of the height of their affair, was to have been a tribute to Maria Zambaco. A study for the central dancing figure (Tate Gallery in 1933 numbered a 3981) depicts Maria with her head turned to the left suggesting that all three figures were originally to have been portraits of Maria, as the dancing figures are in The Garden of Hesperides. Only later with the cooling of the affair the other sitters, Marie Spartali and Agalia Coronio, were introduced as complement to the Greek colony in London and the subsequent purchaser: Constantine Ionides. If the painting had been a commission from it's inception by Ionides, judging by the entries in the work list, his name would surely have been mentioned earlier on, when indeed it does not appear. The dancing figures in the murals by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena for the Allegory of Good Government were the inspiration for the composition with is relationship between the dancing figures and the immense buildings in the background. Both paintings represent a world peace and tranquility. In a recently discovered album of photographs of paintings by Old Masters, from the collection of George Howard, a reproduction of "A Music Party" then attributed to Giorgione (now thought to be the work of Palma Vecchio) in the collection of Lord Northwick, is likely to have been the inspiration for the background mills and river for The Mill. Burne-Jones had access either to an original reproduction (published in 1857 by Caldesi & Montechi ) or to this album. Howard and he had become friends from 1866. The idea contained in The Mill, is an amplification of that found in Girls in a Meadow (The Louvre) of 1861, an interesting contrast between girls relaxing and an idealised industrial landscape which is also explored in the later painting of The Mill.