Edward BURNE-JONES
English 1833-1898
The garden of Pan
c. 1886
oil on canvas
152.5 x 186.9 cm
Felton Bequest 1919
961-3

Pan is usually portrayed as a half-man half-goat whose chief role was that of a shepherd of the Arcadian flocks. His further responsibility was to see that their numbers multiplied, so he is also associated with fertility.

He appears-albeit briefly-in the legends of Homer, Plato and Aeschylus, who tell not just of Pan's amorous adventures but also of his part in the relationships of others. Burne-Jones has not illustrated a specific legend but portrayed a generalised symbolic and somewhat humorous scene of two lovers in an idyllic Arcadian landscape.

When first exhibited, The garden of Pan was highly praised as Burne-Jones' finest work, no doubt due to the fully-worked landscape which is rendered in exquisite detail and to the figures representing the very model of ideal beauty. Burne-Jones was a key follower of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB), a group of artists whose admiration of Early Renaissance art led them to reject the idea of beauty as defined by High Renaissance artists such as Raphael and Michelangelo. proportioned figures.