Rare 1905 Colotype From “The Flower Book” | Burne-Jones | Pre-Raphaelite Art

Rare Original Print, 1905.  Pre-Raphaelite Art.  From The Flower Book.

ARTIST: Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, ARA,  Baronet  1833-1898

TITLE: "Marvel of the World",   "The Birth of Venus"

Plate XXIII from "The Flower Book". signed by the Fine Art Society and numbered 238 of the only edition of 300 

PUBLISHER:  The Fine Art Society, 1905.

PRINTED BY:  Henri Piazza.  

TECHNIQUE:  Pochoir watercolour stencilling over collotype

DIMENSIONS: Image size:  6 inches in diameter

Paper size 12.5 in x 10 in approx.  Deckled edge.

PRESENTATION: Mounted using conservation paper hinges and matted in acid free conservation board. 

Unframed

Note: The numbered justification sheet and explanatory text is not included in the sale. A copy of these for your reference will accompany the original print being sold here.

CONDITIONPaper discolouration associated with the previous mount and light exposure as expected. Slight time related yellowing of paper as expected. 

BACKGROUND:The Flower Book consists of thirty-eight watercolours, six inches across. The originals are in the British Museum.

Burne-Jones described them as 'a series of illustrations to the Names of Flowers'. He used folk names of flowers as stepping-stones into his own imaginative world: as his wife put it, 'not a single flower itself appears. At first he thought any lovely or romantic name would lend itself to his purpose, but soon found ... that comparatively few were of use. Such as had too obvious a meaning as for instance ODIN’S HELM or FAIR MAID OF FRANCE, he rejected because there was not any reserve of thought in them for imagination to work upon. A picture, he held, should be no faint echo of other men’s thoughts, but 'a voice concurrent or prophetical'. It was easy enough, he said, merely to illustrate, but he wanted to add to the meaning of words or to wring their secret from them'. . 

Burne-Jones worked on the series between 1882  until the end of his life.  

In 1905 Georgiana Burne-Jones had replicas of the watercolours published by The Fine Art Society, and printed by Henri Piazza.  The technique was to use hand-stencilled watercolour over collotypes using the pochoir technique to produce brilliant colours from rich mineral pigments. Three-hundred copies of the "Book" were sold in both bound and unbound form. It is limited to 300 copies of which the plate being sold here is from unbound folio numbered  238.  Picture for reference only attached. A copy of the text will be supplied with the print.

Copies of The Flower Book are in the collections of the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, UK  and the Delaware Art Museum, USA

The complete list can be seen if a web search is made of   "The Burne Jones Flower Book Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository"

The British Museum bought the original album of paintings from Georgiana Burne-Jones in 1909.