Visionary and Dreamer

An eminent literary biographer and critic shows how poetry enriched the art of two representative English Romantic painters

In Visionary and Dreamer, David Cecil evokes the century of the poet-painter, when painting drew much of its inspiration from imaginative literature. Samuel Palmer (1805–1881), an unworldly visionary, obscure in his lifetime but now a recognized master, and Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898), the Pre-Raphaelite daydreamer, once revered as a great painter but later admired chiefly for his work in applied art, emerge as artists who turned to their own inner lives to interpret Shakespeare, Milton, and Keats. David Cecil (1902–1986) was a literary historian and biographer and professor of English literature at the University of Oxford. He was the author of many books, including A Portrait of Jane Austen. "[Cecil] does more for both painters than simply recount their lives. He presents both the visionary and dreamer in the bright and captivating light of his own sympathy."