Collection Online as of December 11, 2023
The Legend of Cupid and Psyche: Woman Weeping Beside a Brook
Wood engraving
To borderline: 10.5 x 8.2 cm (4 1/8 x 3 1/4 in.); Sheet: 13.2 x 11.8 cm (5 3/16 x 4 5/8 in.)
Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland 1981.90
Location
not on view
Description
In the mid-1860s, Morris and Burne-Jones embarked on an edition of The Earthly Paradise intended to include more than 200 illustrations. While this extravagant edition of Morris’s poem was eventually abandoned, 47 of Burne-Jones’s illustrations for The Legend of Cupid and Psychewere produced as wood engravings, many of them cut by Morris himself. Psyche, Seeking Death, about to Leap into the Stream, printed on thin tracing paper, displays a surprising delicacy while simultaneously emulating the thick, bold lines of a medieval woodcut.
Edward Burne-Jones
Edward Burne-Jones and Morris met as undergraduates at Oxford University, where both studied theology, planning to enter the church. Instead, a mutual love of poetry and medieval art led these lifelong friends toward careers in art, design, and literature. A successful painter, Burne-Jones also contributed to Morris & Co. as a designer of stained glass and tapestry, as well as to the Kelmscott Press as an illustrator of books