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Flying Figure

Image credit: London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham

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Notes

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Burne-Jones may possibly have been inspired by the allegories of his friend G. F. Watts whom he had known from the late 1850s and whose work he continued to admire. It was Watts who encouraged him to visit Italy in 1859 where he studied, among other Renaissance paintings, the works of Botticelli, a major if distant influence on the figure in this painting. However, despite obvious Italianate elements, the prototype for the single hovering figure above a city may well be Dürer's engraving, the 'Large Nemesis', c.1500. Morris and Burne-Jones had discovered the work of Dürer when undergraduates at Oxford and, to his great delight, John Ruskin gave him a number of Dürer engravings and woodcuts in 1865.

Cecil French Bequest

London

Title

Flying Figure

Date

c.1870

Medium

oil on canvas

Measurements

H 50.8 x W 34.3 cm

Accession number

8

Acquisition method

bequeathed by Cecil French, 1954

Work type

Painting

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Cecil French Bequest

LBHF’s Arts Officer, London, Greater London England

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