The Difference

John Melhuish Strudwick

There’s something wonderfully interesting about seeing the work of an artist who took inspiration mainly from a single predecessor—especially when that predecessor had an especially distinctive style.

A single glance at John Melhuish Strudwick’s 1894 O Swallow, Swallow suffices to demonstrate his enormous debt to Edward Burne-Jones, from his impassive, wide-faced subject to her matte brocade dress, hanging in fairly flat folds. Even the shallow, exaggerated-perspective setting points to Burne-Jones’s influence.

As the Sudley House points out, though, the subject “sits in a richly painted, intricately decorated interior awaiting the message from the bird, which is seen through the open window.”

Indeed, there is a sort of happy chaos to her belongings that—especially when paired with the depth and translucency of the subject’s face—departs wholly from Burne-Jones’s simplified and deliberately flattened style.

Kin Pump On A Pumpkin

Batman - Arkham City Armoured Edition

René Magritte, Lola, 1948