Edward Clifford (1844-1907)
Edward Clifford (1844-1907)

The Forge of Cupid

Details
Edward Clifford (1844-1907)
The Forge of Cupid
inscribed 'Copy by Ed./ Clifford 1890/ of picture by/ E.B. Jones/ 1861' (on a plaque, lower left)
pencil, watercolour and bodycolour, heightened with bodycolour and gum arabic, on paper
13 ¼ x 20 1/8 in. (33.6 x 51.1 cm.)
Provenance
with Walker Bagshawe Fine Art, London.

Brought to you by

Clare Keiller
Clare Keiller

Lot Essay

The story of The Forge of Cupid comes from Geoffrey Chaucer's thirteenth-century poem Parlement of Foules, depicting the moment when the narrator comes across Cupid forging his arrows by a well, while his daughter, Will, tempers and finishes them beside him:

Under a tree beside a welle I sey
Cupide our lorde his arrowes forge and file:
And at his feete his bowe already lay;
And wel his daughter tempred, at the while,
The hiddes in the welle; and with her wile
She couched hem after, as they should serve
Same to slee, and some to wound and kerve.

Burne-Jones read many of the works of Chaucer as a student at Oxford, and he returned to the stories for inspiration over the years, including for the group of works relating to the Romaunt of the Rose, a subject which occupied him from 1860 until his death. He would later provide the wood-cut illustrations for the Kelmscott Chaucer, published by William Morris in 1896. Clifford was heavily influenced by Burne-Jones and copied several of his works, largely in the 1860s, including some commissioned by Burne-Jones himself. Alongside Robert Bateman, Walter Crane and others, he was part of a group of followers of Burne-Jones who exhibited at the Dudley Gallery in the late 1860s and 1870s.

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