Philip Burne-Jones

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Philip Burne-Jones holding a cat
The Vampire, Philip Burne-Jones' most famous work

Sir Philip Burne-Jones, 2nd Baronet (1861–1926) was the first child of the British Pre-Raphaelite artist Sir Edward Burne-Jones and his wife Georgiana Macdonald. He became a well-known painter in his own right, producing more than 60 paintings, including portraits, landscapes, and poetic fantasies.

Life and career[edit]

He was born in London, England in 1861 and was educated at Marlborough College. He attended Oxford University for two years, but dropped out. To appease his parents over this failure, he agreed to take lessons in painting in London.

Philip did focus on painting seriously. His level of skill was high and he exhibited his work in well-known galleries in London and Paris. The Royal Academy exhibited his work eleven times of between 1898 and 1918, and his work was also shown in the Paris Salon of 1900. There he exhibited his portrait of his father, now in the National Portrait Gallery. He painted the portraits of many well-known names of the times.

His most famous work, The Vampire, depicting a woman straddling an unconscious man, was believed to have been modelled by the actress Mrs Patrick Campbell, with whom Burne-Jones had been romantically linked.[1] The painting also inspired Rudyard Kipling's poem of the same name.

Having a famous father was difficult for him, and it was Philip's fate in life that his work was often compared unfavourably with that of his father.

A baronetcy having been bestowed on his father in 1894, upon his father's death in 1898 Philip succeeded to the title. It is said that his father had only accepted it because Philip was so keen to inherit the title.

Burne-Jones visited the United States in 1902, where he was popular in fashionable society. He lived out most of his life in London, where he died in 1926.


  1. ^ "Shaw's Vampire". Time Magazine. 1940-04-22. Retrieved 2008-08-09. 

External links[edit]

Baronetage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Edward Coley Burne-Jones
(of Rottingdean and of the Grange)