This painting and its companion,
The Heart of the Rose, together with the larger painting,
Love Leading the Pilgrim (Tate Gallery), form a trilogy on a romantic theme loosely based on parts of Chaucer's poem Rumaunt of the Rose . Around 1872 Burne-jones and William Morris collaborated on designs for a wall-hanging inspired by the poem, with Burne-jones supplying the figures and Morris the briar background. The narrative sequence, consisting of many scenes, was embroidered by the wife and daughter of Sir Lowthian Bell, Ist Bt, an industrialist, and hung as a frieze in the dining room of his newly-built house, Rounton Grange. Rounton Grange, North Allerton, North Yorkshire was designed by Burne-jones's friend Philip Webb, built in 1872 and is now unfortunately demolished although the stables and some cottages survive. The embroideries, which date 1874-1882, are now in The William Morris Museum, Walthamstow. Both the present painting, dated 1889, and its companion, dated 1884, are based on the artist's original designs for the wall-hanging. The Museum's collection also includes a chalk drawing of The Heart of the Rose , which is almost identical in size and composition to the painting.
The theme of the Romaunt of the Rose occupied Burne-Jones intermittently for over twenty years. The present painting was begun in 1889 and created as a pendant to the earlier Pilgrim at the Gate of Idleness . Both paintings remained in the studio and were taken up again by the artist in 1892, following a period of illness, and completed in time for the New Gallery exhibition in 1893. Love Leading the Pilgrim (Tate Gallery), the largest ofthe group, was begun in 1877 and finally completed in 1897, the date of its exhibition at the New Gallery.
The three paintings are conceived as a sequence. The first is The Pilgrim at the Gate of Idleness , in which the Pilgrim meets Idleness personified as a beguiling maid. Having escaped that temptation, the Pilgrim is led by Love through a briar thicket, depicted in the Tate Gallery painting. The final scene is represented in the present painting, The Heart of the Rose , a winged figure, perhaps Love, leads the Pilgrim to the Rose, personified as a beautiful woman within a rose bush.
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