The Beguiling of Merlin

About 1860, Burne-Jones turned to watercolour as his primary medium, and in 1864 he was elected an Associate of the Old Water-Colour Society (OWCS). This brought his work before a wide public for the first time. It was never popular with the more conservative members and was often savagely attacked in the press. For seven years after resigning from the OWCS, Burne-Jones hardly exhibited, but at the opening exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery, London, in 1877, he showed eight large works. They included The Beguiling of Merlin (1873-77; Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight), The Mirror of Venus (1873-77; Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon), and The Days of Creation (1871-76; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge). This dramatic revelation of his mature powers established him overnight as the star of the Grosvenor, a key figure in the Aesthetic Movement and one of the leading artists of the day.

The Beguiling of Merlin depicts a scene from the Arthurian legend about the infatuation of Merlin with the Lady of the Lake, Nimue. Merlin is shown trapped, helpless in a hawthorn bush as Nimue reads from a book of spells.