SIR EDWARD COLEY BURNE-JONES, BT., A.R.A., R.W.S. (1833–1898) Love among the Ruins (1870– 1873). (Click on image to enlarge). UPDATE: IT SOLD FOR A RECORD £14.8 MILLION.
A long unseen Pre-Raphaelite masterpiece by Edward Burne-Jones comes up at Christie’s sale of Victorian and British Impressionist art in London on July 11. Love Among the Ruins, a meditation on the eternal nature of love, features Burne-Jones’ mistress Maria Zambaco. Christie’s say the five foot watercolour is the most important work by the artist to come to auction since Laus Veneris was sold to the Laing Art Galery in Newcastle in 1971.
Not seen in public for 50 years the work has been celebrated since it was first exhibited at the Dudley Gallery in London in 1873. Love Among the Ruins established the interational reputation of Burne-Jones when it was shown at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1878. It was exhibited at the exhibition which inaugurated the Birmingham Art Gallery in 1885-86, the Royal Jubilee Exhibition at Manchester in 1887, an annual loan exhibition at the Guildhall, London, in 1892, and in the Burne-Jones’s retrospective exhibition at the New Gallery, London later that year. The title comes from a poem by Robert Browning. It was damaged in a way the artist considered beyond repair in 1893 while it was being prepared to make a photogravure. He kept it in his studio and repaired it five years later by redrawing the face of Maria Zambaco. Five weeks later he died. Last bought in 1958 for 480 guineas (£500) it is now estimated at £3-5 million.