Souls on the Banks of the River Styx by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt ARA

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Souls on the Banks of the River Styx

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Bt ARA (1833-1898)

c. 1873

Oil on canvas

35 x 27 1/2 inches; 89 x 69.8 cm.

Provenance: Sir Philip Burne-Jones, Bt.; Sir Philip Burne-Jones' Sale, Christies, 5 June 1919 (lot 172).

Exhibited: The Garden Studio, The Grange (the Burne-Jones's family house in Fulham), c. 1900.

Preparatory drawings for this work.

two nude figures with arms around each other

crouch male nude and standing female

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According to Waters, "this painting is inspired by a passage in Virgil's Aeneid describing souls awaiting their passage to the underworld. The stanzas which Burne-Jones has illustrated run as follows in Morris' translation:

All dim amid the lonely night on throught he dust they went,

On through the empty house of Dis, the land of naught at all,
E'en as beneath the doubtful moon, when niggard light doth fall,
On some way amid the woods, when God hath hidden heaven,
And black night fron the things of earth the colours clear hath given.

Down thither rushed as mighty crowd, unto the flood-side borne;
Mothers and men, and bodies their with all the life outworn.
Of great souled heroes; many a body and never wedded maid.
And youths before their fathers eyes upon the death-bale laid:

There stood the first and prayed him hard to waft their bodies o'er,
With hands stetched out for utter love of that far-flying shore.
But that grim sailor now takes these, now those from out the band,
While all the others far away he thrustheth from the sand.' [p.46]

Related Materials

"The Land of Naught at All:" Edward Burne-Jones' Souls on the Banks of the River Styx

Bibliography

Waters, Bill. Burne-Jones -- A Quest for Love: Works by Sir Edward Burne-Jones Bt and Related Works by Contemporary Artists. London: Peter Nahum, 1993. Catalogue number 7.

Last modified 5 June 2020