English painter Edward Burne-Jones's first big success…

English painter Edward Burne-Jones's first big success finally comes at age forty-four.

Only two works of the painter's had been exhibited during the past seven years, from 1870 to 1877.

These were two watercolors, shown at the Dudley Gallery in 1873, one of them being the beautiful Love among the Ruins (destroyed twenty years later by a cleaner who supposed it to be an oil painting, but afterwards reproduced in oils by the painter).

This silent period has been, however, one of unremitting production.

Hitherto, Burne-Jones had worked almost entirely in watercolors, but has now begun a number of large pictures in oils, working at them in turn, and having always several on hand.

The first Briar Rose series, Laus Veneris, the Golden Stairs, the Pygmalion series, and The Mirror of Venus are among the works planned and completed, or carried far towards completion, during these years.

These years also mark the beginnings of Burne-Jones's partnership with the fine-art photographer Frederick Hollyer, whose reproductions of paintings and—especially—drawings will expose a wider audience to Burne-Jones's works in the coming decades.

At last, in May 1877, the day of recognition comes, with the opening of the first exhibition of the Grosvenor Gallery, when the Days of Creation, The Beguiling of Merlin, and the Mirror of Venus are all shown.

He now begins increasingly considered to be among the great painters of England.

Adherents of the Later Pre-Raphaelite style, such as Burne-Jones in his Briar Rose series, will influence the Symbolist movement of the following era.