The Briar Rose paintings

It is one of the most remarkable paintings of a rose you will find – well worth a pilgrimage to visit. In this special blog, guest contributor James Henderson shares his insight of Edward Burne-Jones’ “The Briar Rose” series which is displayed at Buscot Park. James and his wife, Lucinda, live and manage the house and grounds on behalf of the National Trust.

What picture has the most roses painted in it? A contender would be the great Pre-Raphaelite artist Burne-Jones’s “The Briar Rose” cycle which can be seen at Buscot Park in Oxfordshire – a property that was in my family for many years and now belongs to the National Trust.

It is in fact a series of pictures depicting the Sleeping Beauty legend. The paintings do not present a sequential story but rather capture a moment in time. There are four main panels, each nearly 50 x 100 inches in size (1.25m x 2.5m) and seven smaller interlocking ones. We meet the prince in the first main canvas. In that one alone I have counted over a hundred rose flowers. Sleeping Beauty lies in the final panel.

The rose briar runs through the sequence of pictures giving it a narrative thread. It is beautifully painted. Burne-Jones wrote to a friend asking to be sent a briar rose “hoary… thick as a wrist and with long horrible spikes on it… Three feet would be enough.” Certainly, he captured this in the finished picture.

The painting was an immense success when it was first shown at Agnew’s galleries in Bond Street in 1890. It was subsequently exhibited in Liverpool and at Toynbee Hall, Whitechapel, London.

Burne-Jones visit

There was “enthusiasm amounting to ecstasy” as people flocked to see it. It was then sold to Lord Faringdon to hang at Buscot. When Burne-Jones was staying nearby with his great friend William Morris at Kelmscott, he visited and was disappointed with how they looked.

He moved them within the house and added the seven extra panels that now join them together spanning three walls, and in which he continued the rose motif. He designed a framework of carved and gilt wood to give unity to the sequence.

The Briar Rose: the Briar Wood, Edward Burne-Jones (1885-1890). Oil on canvas
This painting depicts the Knight discovering the sleeping soldiers who have become completely entwined by the barbed thorns of the briar rose discovery of the sleeping soldiers by a Knight. Courtesy of the Faringdon Collection

Morris provided a poem to run below the four main canvases. The first main panel is called “The Briar Wood” and the inscription below it runs:

The fateful slumber floats and flows
About the tangle of the rose;
But lo! The fated hand and heart
To rend the slumberous curse apart!

The last of the four main panels is “The Rose Bower” with the lines below it:

Here lies the hoarded love, the key
To all the treasure that shall be;
Come fated hand the gift to take
And smite this sleeping world awake

Meaning?

In between these two we have “The Council Chamber” and “The Garden Court”. What is the painting all about? The key is surely in this poem. Morris and Burne-Jones are harping back to a past before industrialisation. The world has walked in its sleep into a tawdry present from which it needs to be awoken.

The Briar Rose: the Garden Court, Edward Burne-Jones (1885-1890). Oil on canvas
Weavers are depicted asleep at their loom with the castle walls and arches of roses in the background. Courtesy of the Faringdon Collection

The Briar Rose: the Council Chamber, Edward Burne-Jones (1885-1890). Oil on canvas
The King, asleep and slumped on his throne, is surrounded by sleeping members of the council. Sleeping soldiers
can be seen under the draped curtains. Courtesy of the Faringdon Collection

Dreamlike

However, it is not just this. It is a dream – a deep beautiful dream. And like many of our deepest dreams, it makes little sense in the cold light of day. The Knight in “The  Briar Wood” canvas looks languid. He is not going to get far in cutting through the rose. The King on his throne in the council chamber appears to be wearing a papal gown. The weavers are in a highly polished, dirt-free room. Christian and Islamic motifs are muddled together. Where are we actually? It is all a glorious, beautiful absurdity, like the most extraordinary dream.

The picture is considered one of the greatest achievements of Victorian painting, but its huge popularity was short-lived. The horrors of the First World War were not far away, and a picture of roses and pretty girls seemed very dated as the new art movements on the continent came to dominate in the 20th century.

But in the past 40 years there has been a revival of interest in late Victorian art. “The Briar Rose” has bloomed again, appreciated by a new audience.

“The Briar Rose” can be seen at Buscot Park from March to September. Admission is free to National Trust members.

Banner image: The Briar Rose: the Rose Bower, Edward Burne-Jones (1885-1890). Oil on canvas. Part of four original paintings illustrating the Sleeping Beauty fairytale.

The sleeping beauty is surrounded by her slumbering attendants as she awaits the prince to wake her with a kiss. The princess was modelled on Burne-Jones’s daughter Margaret. Courtesy of the Faringdon Collection