Lot Essay
Like so many members of the Birmingham Group, Metyard studied under E.R. Taylor at the local School of Art and subsequently joined the staff, remaining a member for forty-seven years (1886-1933). He contributed to the murals which the Group painted in Birmingham Town Hall c.1890, and to two of their joint schemes of illustration, A Book of Pictured Carols (1893) and The Quest (1894-6). For many years he exhibited with the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, of which he became Secretary; nor did he ever move away from the Birmingham area. In this he differed from the Paynes, the Geres and the Gaskins, who departed at various dates to colonise the Cotswolds.
All the group were powerfully influenced by Ruskin, William Morris and Burne-Jones (a native of Birmingham); but Meteyard, whose work embraced paintings, stained glass and other forms of decorative art, was perhaps the most indebted to Burne-Jones in terms of style. He may well have encountered him personally when Burne-Jones visited the Art School to give informal instruction, and he was certainly powerfully impressed by the great set-pieces of Burne-Jones's art to be seen in Birmingham: the four enormous stained-glass windows in the Cathedral, 1885-97, and the equally gigantic watercolour The Star of Bethlehem, commissioned by the Corporation for the new Art Gallery and completed in 1891. It is the hard, formalised style of these later works that is consistently mirrored in Meteyard's paintings, decorative designs and illustrations.
It sometimes seems as if Meteyard deliberately chose subjects that suited his stylistic approach. One of his best illustrations to Longfellow's Golden Legend (1910) is a composition with jagged rock formations inspired by a reference to stone in the text (Last Romantics exh., 1989, no.88, repr. in cat.). In St George and the Dragon he finds congenial motifs in the Saint's plate armour and the dragon's scaly body, while even the Princess's drapery looks as if it had been cut out of sheet metal. The harsh reds and greens of the colour scheme underline this formal toughness.
The subject of St George had impeccable Pre-Raphaelite credentials, having been treated at various dates by Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Morris. There are also numerous parallels in the work of the sculptors, - Gilbert, Drury, Frampton, Reynolds-Stephens, Bayes, Turner and others - who were inspired by late Pre-Raphaelite paintings to execute figures of St George and other armoured heroes, often in the context of First World War memorials. For further discussion of this phenomenon, see Richard Dorment, Alfred Gilbert, Royal Academy exh. cat., 1986; Benedict Read, 'Sailing to Byzantium?' in the Last Romantics exh. cat., 1989; and John Christian, 'Burne-Jones and Sculpture', in Benedict Read and Joanna Barnes (eds.), Pre-Raphaelite Sculpture, 1991.
All the group were powerfully influenced by Ruskin, William Morris and Burne-Jones (a native of Birmingham); but Meteyard, whose work embraced paintings, stained glass and other forms of decorative art, was perhaps the most indebted to Burne-Jones in terms of style. He may well have encountered him personally when Burne-Jones visited the Art School to give informal instruction, and he was certainly powerfully impressed by the great set-pieces of Burne-Jones's art to be seen in Birmingham: the four enormous stained-glass windows in the Cathedral, 1885-97, and the equally gigantic watercolour The Star of Bethlehem, commissioned by the Corporation for the new Art Gallery and completed in 1891. It is the hard, formalised style of these later works that is consistently mirrored in Meteyard's paintings, decorative designs and illustrations.
It sometimes seems as if Meteyard deliberately chose subjects that suited his stylistic approach. One of his best illustrations to Longfellow's Golden Legend (1910) is a composition with jagged rock formations inspired by a reference to stone in the text (Last Romantics exh., 1989, no.88, repr. in cat.). In St George and the Dragon he finds congenial motifs in the Saint's plate armour and the dragon's scaly body, while even the Princess's drapery looks as if it had been cut out of sheet metal. The harsh reds and greens of the colour scheme underline this formal toughness.
The subject of St George had impeccable Pre-Raphaelite credentials, having been treated at various dates by Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Morris. There are also numerous parallels in the work of the sculptors, - Gilbert, Drury, Frampton, Reynolds-Stephens, Bayes, Turner and others - who were inspired by late Pre-Raphaelite paintings to execute figures of St George and other armoured heroes, often in the context of First World War memorials. For further discussion of this phenomenon, see Richard Dorment, Alfred Gilbert, Royal Academy exh. cat., 1986; Benedict Read, 'Sailing to Byzantium?' in the Last Romantics exh. cat., 1989; and John Christian, 'Burne-Jones and Sculpture', in Benedict Read and Joanna Barnes (eds.), Pre-Raphaelite Sculpture, 1991.