Edward Burne-Jones review – art that shows how boring beauty can be

Tate Britain, London
The pre-Raphaelite artist mastered detail perfectly but failed to see the bigger picture – life itself

Halfway through Tate Britain’s loving homage to the Victorian “visionary” Edward Burne-Jones I was startled to see a painting I gave a damn about. It’s a portrait of William Graham, colonial businessman, Liberal MP and art collector. His emaciated, sick-looking face stares straight at you from a small dark canvas. Two mad sweeps of white hair sprout from either side of his balding crown. His eyes are gelid and numbed. He looks utterly tortured.

Why is this small, unpretentious portrait so much more interesting than the depictions of mythology and legend that fill this exhibition? Because it looks real. Graham was Burne-Jones’s patron and there must have been true intimacy between them. For once, Burne-Jones paints with a raw simplicity that gives you the awkward and irreplacable sense of being confronted by life, not art.

What Burne-Jones needed, apart from a slap in the face with a wet fish, was to read more Oscar Wilde

Edward Burne-Jones is at Tate Britain, London, from 24 October until 24 February.

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