Artwork
The Feast of Peleus
The Feast of Peleus is an oil painting by the Aestheticist artist Edward Burne-Jones. It dates from 1895 and is held in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
About this work
Overview
Created in 1895, Edward Burne‑Jones’s oil on canvas titled The Feast of Peleus presents a mythological banquet set in an open landscape. Figures, largely unclothed, gather around a long table, some seated, others standing, while music and fruit suggest a festive atmosphere. The backdrop features a tranquil body of water framed by distant mountains, reinforcing the work’s classical ambience.
Subject & Meaning
The composition draws on the ancient tale of Peleus’s wedding feast, a moment traditionally associated with revelry and divine participation. Burne‑Jones emphasizes communal joy and unrestrained celebration, using the nakedness of the participants to evoke a timeless, idealized state of nature where music, laughter, and abundance converge.
Technique & Style
Figures are rendered with fine, linear contours and a restrained palette that balances warm flesh tones against cool landscape hues.
Executed in the aestheticism vein, the painting showcases Burne‑Jones’s meticulous draftsmanship and subtle coloration. Figures are rendered with fine, linear contours and a restrained palette that balances warm flesh tones against cool landscape hues. The artist’s handling of light creates a gentle glow, while the composition’s rhythmic arrangement of bodies reflects his Pre‑Raphaelite training merged with his later personal idiom.
History & Provenance
By the late 1870s Burne‑Jones had already achieved recognition through exhibitions at venues such as the Grosvenor Gallery, where works like The Beguiling of Merlin attracted critical attention. Although The Feast of Peleus was painted later, it belongs to the period when the artist, after collaborations with William Morris, had fully developed his independent visual language. The painting entered public view in the early twentieth century, remaining in private collections before being acquired by a museum in the 1970s.
Artist & collection
Artist
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet (; 28 August 1833 – 17 June 1898) was an English painter and designer associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's style and subject matter.
The Building of the 'Argo'
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The Building of the 'Argo'
The River
The Car of Love (Love's Wayfaring)
The Olympus (Jupiter, Crowned with Myrtle By the Hours, Proffers a Goblet to Ganymede to Be Served Nectar)
Inter artes et naturam (Between Art and Nature)