The English painter and designer Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-1898) inherited some of the tradition and preoccupations of the Pre-Raphaelite painters. He was a designer for the firm of Morris & Co.

Edward Burne-Jones was born on Aug. 28, 1833, and was originally destined for the Church. With that intention he went to Oxford University in 1852, where he met William Morris, who became his lifelong colleague. When Burne-Jones met Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1855, Rossetti persuaded him to leave Oxford and become a painter. The following year Burne-Jones became Rossetti's pupil.

Burne-Jones and Morris collaborated in 1857 on Rossetti's mural paintings in the Oxford Union. The earliest works of Burne-Jones, such as the watercolor Clerk Sanders (1861), closely resemble Rossetti's in style and technique but only distantly echo the teacher's vivid, mystical expressiveness: Rossetti's passion gives way to a delicate, meditative nostalgia.

Visits to Italy in 1859 and 1862 resulted in a noticeable change in Burne-Jones's...