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Lecture will take place online.
In 1871 Edward Burne-Jones went on his third visit to Italy. On his trip, he took with him a small octavo sketchbook. It is now located in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa where the speaker work as a curator. In it, there are over 150 sketches which record his response to a diversity of places, from Turin down to Rome. This was his first (and only) visit to the Eternal City and he disliked it fairly intensely! The sketches can be categorised as landscapes, including studies of olive trees, architecture – both domestic fragments and panoramas – and copies of the mostly Early Renaissance art that most inspired him, while occasionally there are definite touches of his whimsical humour. The sketchbook is also interspersed with pithy observations about his responses to the art he saw and the people he met.
If there was ever a one-shilling sketchbook that punched above its weight, it is this one. It is no exaggeration to say that the origins of some of his greatest paintings can be located here, not once, but repeatedly. You can read more about it in Stocker’s Te Papa Christmas blog, https://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/2018/12/21/all-i-want-for-christmas-is-burne-jones/
This lecture will look at its significance.
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