Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, 1884, oil on canvas (Tate Britain, London)
[0:00] [music]
Dr. Beth Harris: [0:06] So here we are in the Tate, looking at a beautiful painting by Edward Burne-Jones called “King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid,” from 1884.
Dr. Steven Zucker: [0:14] It’s a really tall painting.
Dr. Harris: [0:16] It’s very vertical. I was thinking about that just as we were standing here and how unusual that verticality is in art history. Although, there is another painting of similar verticality next to it by Burne-Jones called “The Golden Stairs.” It made me wonder what it was about that kind of verticality that appealed to him.
Dr. Zucker: [0:35] The vertical format really allows him to do some interesting things compositionally. It allows him to stand the lance up on the right side of the canvas. It allows for this interesting kind of movement, I think, with our eyes upward. You know? I sort of step into those stairs, and then I travel up the length of the male body, through his gaze to her, and then up again to the figures at the top.
Dr. Harris: [0:57] Right, who direct your gaze again back down to the beggar-maid. The story here is, we have King Cophetua, a African king who has not been interested in women until he’s met this very beautiful woman who is a beggar.
[1:15] Here, he is shown seated at her feet. He’s removed, I think significantly, removed his crown and is holding it in his hands. His shield and lance are rested on that right side. He looks up at her and she looks out at us. She doesn’t return his gaze.
Dr. Zucker: [1:35] It’s a wildly interesting subject because it’s really about the power of love. The way it trespasses over social structures. What would that have meant in the 19th century?
Dr. Harris: [1:47] That’s a good question. This is very much a ideal, romantic image, a chivalrous medieval image.
Dr. Zucker: [1:55] Absolutely, it seems very chaste in that way. It’s a pretty quiet painting.
Dr. Harris: [1:58] What’s striking me is the space itself. Are those stairs? I mean, those are stairs, but what kind of odd stairs lead up to essentially nothing?
Dr. Zucker: [2:09] That’s right.
Dr. Harris: [2:10] At the top the stairs. It’s almost like…
Dr. Zucker: [2:11] It’s like closed space.
Dr. Harris: [2:13] Like stairs that kind of form a throne at the top.
Dr. Zucker: [2:17] It is like a throne, or almost like a little altar.
Dr. Harris: [2:19] It made me think that one of the things that appealed to him about the narrowness of the shape of this canvas is the way that he can compress this space and make it not a kind of perspectival space. It is a space that makes sense, but one that’s sort of crowded and cramped and rather mysterious. Reminding me a little bit of Northern Renaissance painting.
Dr. Zucker: [2:41] Interesting. It’s almost like a little bit of a stage for this enactment.
Dr. Harris: [2:46] And there’s so much gold here. It contrasts with, of course, her plainness, right?
Dr. Zucker: [2:52] Yes.
Dr. Harris: [2:52] And the simplicity of what she’s wearing. We can see her poverty in very stark contrast to the wealth of the palace where the king lives.
Dr. Zucker: [3:02] But what that does is it means that because she has no artifice, it’s her natural beauty, her innate beauty that we look at and that is meaningful to him. I think that is [an] important sort of moral aspect. That notion that one has to look beyond artifice and really recognize true beauty, I think, is critical. It seems to me that would have been important to these artists.
Dr. Harris: [3:24] Absolutely. I think that idea of recognizing that truth lies beyond the material world with all of its visual appeal. It’s a little bit like Burne-Jones is giving us something that draws our eye almost as much as she does, but she wins.
[3:41] All that gold is wrought and engraved. It’s almost like we’re being tempted. It’s like a moral dilemma for the viewer, drawing our eye to it. You want to get up close to the painting and look at all those details that are in that gold that’s glistening, but then we have this idea of truth and beauty that are more important than the things that appeal superficially to the eye.
Dr. Zucker: [4:05] And so that king really functions for us as the lead. He’s taken off his crown. He looks past that and sees her. We are, in a sense, to do the same.
Dr. Harris: [4:16] I think that moral aspect to that rings very true as a Victorian painting, that little lesson that’s here about what’s important.
[4:25] [music]
Her arms across her breast she laid;
She was more fair than words can say:
Bare-footed came the beggar maid
Before the king Cophetua.
In robe and crown the king stept down,
To meet and greet her on her way;
“It is no wonder,” said the lords,
“She is more beautiful than day”.
As shines the moon in clouded skies,
She in her poor attire was seen:
One praised her ancles, one her eyes,
One her dark hair and lovesome mien:
So sweet a face, such angel grace,
In all that land had never been:
Cophetua sware a royal oath:
“This beggar maid shall be my queen!”
The Beggar Maid (written 1833, published 1842) by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
The power of love
King and Beggar Maid (detail), Edward Burne-Jones, King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, oil on canvas, 1884, 293.4 x 135.9 cm (Tate Britain, London)
In King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, Edward Burne-Jones depicts the moment when, according to legend, an African king noted for his lack of interest in women, finally falls in love. The object of his affections is a beautiful beggar, and in a fairy-tale happy ending, King Cophetua marries the young woman, making her his queen. It is a story about the power of love and its ability to transcend more practical considerations such as social class.
Edward Burne-Jones, King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, oil on canvas, 1884, 293.4 x 135.9 cm (Tate Britain, London)
As in many of his other paintings, Burne-Jones used an extremely vertical canvas. The beautiful beggar maid sits in the middle of the composition, above the king himself, a very visual reminder of the obvious elevation in her social status. Her pale skin contrasts with the darker tones in the rest of the painting, helping to focus our attention on the slim, ethereal figure that is so typical of Burne-Jones’s women.
Scholars have noted the resemblance of the beggar maid to Burne-Jones’s wife Georgina, whom he married in 1860. One of the four celebrated MacDonald sisters, Georgina would later become the artist’s biographer. Theirs was not always a match made in heaven, however. Burne-Jones’s affair with his model Maria Zambuco caused a scandal when Zambuco, distraught over the end of their relationship, made a public scene outside the house of the poet Robert Browning when she threatened to commit suicide by throwing herself into the Regent Canal.
Interestingly, one of the flowers found in King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid is the anemone, the symbol of rejected love, a sentiment obviously not in line with the story of the painting, but perhaps more meaningful to the artist himself. Scholars have also pointed out that the theme of love winning out over considerations of class and money was in keeping with the ideas expressed by William Morris, a Socialist, and one of Burne-Jones’s closest friends.
Figures at the top (detail), Edward Burne-Jones, King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, oil on canvas, 1884, 293.4 x 135.9 cm (Tate Britain, London)
Literary source
The subject was inspired by a reprint of “A Song of a Beggar and a King” by Richard Johnson (1612) published in 1842 by the Percy Society, and by Lord Alfred Tennyson’s poem “The Beggar Maid,” which appeared in the same year. Tennyson, who became Poet Laureate in 1850 and received a peerage in 1884, was extremely popular with the Victorians, including Queen Victoria herself. Many of his poems were a source of inspiration for artists of the day. Burne-Jones’ interpretation of the subject was well received when it was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in the spring of 1884, and when it was exhibited in 1889 at the Paris Universal Exhibition, Burne-Jones received a Cross of the Legion of Honour from the French government.
The sentimentality of the subject undoubtedly appealed to a 19th century audience. In Victorian painting, where so many of the stories behind the pictures end badly, the happily ever after narrative of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid is a refreshingly upbeat subject. The combination of the romantic theme and the brilliant execution make this one of Burne-Jones’s most celebrated paintings.
