William Shakespeare Burton

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The Wounded Cavalier , 1855

William Shakespeare Burton (born June 1, 1824 , † January 26, 1916 ) was an English genre and history painter in the Victorian era . His best known work is The Wounded Cavalier (1855; see picture).

Life

Burton's grandfather was a printer and his father, William Evans Burton, was a comedian who achieved success in the United States after leaving his wife and son in London with little money. As a teenager, Burton worked as a copier, the critic Tom Taylor was his sponsor. Taylor helped Burton get a job with the British satirical magazine Punch . There he created fonts for illustrations.

At the time, Burton was at King's College London and the Royal Academy School. In the latter, he won a gold medal in 1852 for a picture of Samson and Delilah . Although ill and plagued by personal troubles, Burton continued to paint well into the 1880s. His wife, Elizabeth Burton, was the author of the novel Ruling the Planets (1891).

The Wounded Cavalier

The work depicts a scene from the English Civil War from 1642 to 1649 : a royal trustee lies wounded on the ground, the blade of his broken sword is stuck in the tree next to him while he is still holding the hilt in his hand. He is supported by a puritan girl. Her companion looks down at both of them thoughtfully, a Bible in hand.

To paint this work, Burton is said to have dug a hole so that he could see the grass and the ferns up close. The picture was shown at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1856.

The Wounded Cavalier shows the influence of John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelite movement of the 1850s, and later devoted his life to painting religious pictures.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John S. Purcell, A Veteran Artist: Mr. William Shakespeare Burton , The English Illustrated Magazine , Vol. 35 (1906); Pages 238 to 248.
  2. ↑ a b Christopher Wood, Victorian Painting , Boston, Little, Brown & Co., 1999 ( ISBN 978-0821223260 ); Page 120.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Burton, William Shakespeare
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British genre painter
DATE OF BIRTH June 1, 1824
DATE OF DEATH January 26, 1916