A Transatlantic Design: Viking Ship by Edward Burnes-Jones

A lone ship rides upon the roiling waves of the ocean in Edward Burne-Jones’s stained-glass window Viking Ship. A group of men huddle in the boat, navigating the tumultuous seas while their sail strains at its ropes. A small lantern at the helm provides the only illumination. As the ocean rises around the precarious craft, the viewer is left wondering if the sea will capsize the vessel or will the men prevail in their journey?

It is surprising for a window to convey such emotional drama. Burne-Jones achieved the effect through the window’s structure and composition. Color plays a prominent role: the contrast between the ship and the sea immediately places the two forces at odds. The vessel and its crew are rendered in light, warm, golden tones reminiscent of the earth with its tan wooden boards, glowing sails, and honeyed light spilling from the lamp. The sea by contrast is cool in its hue, rendered in blues with tinges of green that range from a pale almost frothy white to nearly black. Burne-Jones further underscored the push and pull of the scene by depicting the waves rising behind the sailors in mounting arches while the figures face forward, seemingly oblivious to the oncoming peril. The curvilinear forms add dynamic tension by encouraging the viewer’s eye to move across the scene, along the waves, over the prow, up the sail, and back through the waves again. The arch of one shape blends into the next, making the ship and sea appear inseparable in their struggle.

Burne-Jones was among the most celebrated artists of the later Pre-Raphaelite movement, renowned for his poetic interpretations of myth, legend, and medieval romance. Beginning in the early 1860s, he became the principal designer of stained glass for Morris & Co., the influential decorative arts firm founded by his close friend William Morris. Morris & Co. sought to revive the craftsmanship of the Middle Ages by producing handmade furnishings, textiles, wallpapers, furniture, and stained glass. Burne-Jones supplied hundreds of window designs for churches and domestic spaces, while skilled craftsmen in the firm’s workshops translated his drawings into finished glass.

Burne-Jones’s was a masterful storyteller in stained glass, which led American Catharine Lorillard Wolfe to commission Viking Ship for her Gilded Age mansion, Vinland, in Newport, Rhode Island. The sole heiress to two large family fortunes, Wolfe was the richest unmarried woman in America during the last quarter of the Nineteenth Century. Alongside her father John David Wolfe, she engaged in many charitable endeavors and was a knowledgeable and prolific art collector. Through mutual connections, Wolfe met William Michael Rossetti, brother to Dante Gabriel, and was gradually introduced to the Pre-Raphaelites and their circle. By the time Wolfe decided to build Vinland in 1881, she was well acquainted with the work of Burne-Jones.

Wolfe designed Vinland to reflect her interest in Norse history and mythology; Viking Ship was a critical part of this visual scheme. Architects Peabody & Stearns of Boston built the house with rugged red sandstone in a stately Richardsonian Romanesque design while designer Richard Codman filled the house with furnishings and decorations from Morris & Co. The project was completed in 1883 and Wolfe moved in shortly thereafter. While the home was under construction, Wolfe took an active role in designing the interior and exterior of the mansion by personally commissioning decorative elements directly from artists. For example, Wolfe commissioned British artist Walter Crane to create a frieze to decorate her dining room. The frieze illustrated Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem The Skeleton in Armor, which narrated the story of a Viking sailor who traveled to America. The Delaware Art Museum holds Crane’s studies for the first and fourth panels.

For Viking Ship, Wolfe commissioned Morris & Co. in 1883 to create a large stained-glass window to be installed over the main staircase that would combine Norse mythology, Viking subject matter, and local legends. Burne-Jones’s design consisted of seven panels, of which Viking Ship was one. Although Burne-Jones designed this window, he did not perform the labor of cutting, assembling, and firing the glass. After creating an initial drawing, Burne-Jones turned it over to a workshop assistant, perhaps Charles Fairfax Murray or Thomas Matthews Rooke, to create a vidimus, a full-sized cartoon of the window in watercolor. The vidimus would have been presented to Wolfe for final approval and was subsequently used by other workshop assistants as a template for assembling the glass. Artists Thomas George Bowman, John Henry Dearle, and William E. Stokes all painted various parts of the Vinland window and collaborated to finish the piece. Once complete, the window was shipped to Newport where it was installed in Wolfe’s home.

Wolfe died four years after Vinland’s completion. The mansion’s ownership changed several times before it was donated to Salve Regina College in 1955. The large window was removed from the house in 1934 and then taken to an auction house in Baltimore in 1937 where the glass segments were separated and sold individually. Viking Ship is the only extant panel of seven. It remains a testament to one woman’s singular vision and the transatlantic appeal of the designs of Morris & Co.

  Written by Katherine Feldkamp, Curatorial Associate