Terms and Conditions
The artist, title and date of the work must be listed anywhere the image is reproduced:
Edward Burne-Jones
The Wheel of Fortune (1871-1885)
oil on canvas
151.4 × 72.5 cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Felton Bequest, 1909
Photo: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
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The Wheel of Fortune
(1871-1885)
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
151.4 × 72.5 cm
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Felton Bequest, 1909
Gallery location
19th Century European Paintings Gallery
Level 2, NGV International
About this work
In 1870 Burne-Jones had planned a suite of ten paintings devoted to the history of ancient Troy. Included were a number of small panels addressing related themes associated with the theme of love conquering all. While The Wheel of Fortune was a subsidiary element within the grand (and unfinished) Troy project, the painting stands well alone, with the powerful goddess Fortuna, turning the figures of a slave, king and poet upon her implacable wheel of destiny. Burne-Jones executed no fewer than six versions of The Wheel of Fortune, in various media. He began this painting in 1871 and did not complete it until 1885.
Frame: Original, maker unknown, partly reconstructed, 2003
Artwork Details
Inscription
inscribed in brown paint u.l.: EB(dot)J (monogram)
Accession Number
381-2
Department
International Painting
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of Digitisation Champion Dame Carol Colburn-Grigor CBE through Metal Manufactures Limited
Subjects (general)
Human Figures Religion and Mythology
Subjects (specific)
goddesses kings (people) men (male humans) nudes (representations) slaves (people) Wheel of Fortune (Allegorical theme) wheels (components) women (female humans)
Movements
Pre-Raphaelite
Frame
Burne-Jones Wheel of Fortune, had been removed from the outer sections of the tabernacle style frame (referred to as the candelabrum frame with reference to the ornament on the frieze) that originally surrounded the painting and put on display in the slip and flat of the frame. No date for this intervention has come to light, though it must predate 1966. A card file from 1966 shows the painting in only the frieze section with a note frame: Mr Beal. This intervention with the frame might be associated with the broad sweep of modernisation of frames in the collection that ran from the late 1930s through the 1950s.
The top and bottom entablature components appear to have been discarded but one section of the ‘egg and dart’ outer border was found in storage.
The painting appears in the full frame in a photograph of the Stawell Gallery (NGV, Swanston St. site) p.98 of the illustrated catalogue of the National Gallery of Victoria, 1911 and in part in the background of the reproduction of Mackennal’s Circe in the same publication.
The same frame appears on a painting by Burne-Jones in the Dallas Museum of Art (The Pilgrim at the gate of idleness) and Tate Gallery (Vesperina Quies). Another version of the frame appears on The Tree of Forgiveness, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight.
These complete frames, in particular the one at Tate, were used to reconstruct the pediments while the remaining original piece of the outer border was used to replicate the remaining three sections.
The timber work, casting, carving of the gesso and toning and finishing of the surface was carried out in the frame studio of the NGV.
The painting was refitted into the reconstructed frame in 2003.
Frame Details
Framemaker
Unknown - 19th century
Date
c.1885
Materials
wood, composition, gold leaf
Frame Condition
partly reconstructed 2003