'You haunt me everywhere' So wrote Edward Burne-Jones to Frances Graham,
his muse for the last 25 triumphant years of his life: 'I haven't a
corner of my life or my thoughts where you are not'. He drew her
obsessively, included her in some of his most famous paintings, and
showered her with gifts. Even when she betrayed him to marry, he would
return to her. To him 'all the romance and beauty of my life means you.'
This is the first biography of his muse. In a discreet, subtle, human
way, her life is a study in power - artistic, social, political,
familial, local - and all the more fascinating for being played out from
a perennial position of weakness. What makes a muse? The word conjures
up for the artist a human cocoon of sexual allure and worship: part
inspiration, part lover and protector. Yet however beguiling, demanding
and volatile a muse could be, it remained a life surrendered to the art
of another. In Victorian England this was especially so with the
hierarchies between the sexes so firmly entrenched. The life of a muse
to a Pre-Raphaelite artist was no different: Ruskin and Effie Gray,
Rossetti and Lizzie Siddal, both powerfully destructive relationships
that ended respectively in divorce and death. The one who survived was
Frances Graham. She had a restless, irrepressible intelligence, able to
mix at her small dinners politicians and aristocrats with writers,
artists and the up and coming, be they Oscar Wilde or Albert Einstein.
In time, she became the confidante of three government ministers,
including Asquith, the Liberal leader. 'The Portrait of a Muse' is the
tale of a remarkable woman living in an age on the cusp of modernity. 75
illustrations enhance the book.
