Cupid's Hunting Fields

Cupid's Hunting Fields, produced around 1880, belongs to a group of works in which Burne-Jones explored the erotic playfulness of classical love mythology in a gentler, more decorative register than his graver allegorical canvases. The image of Cupid as a hunter—pursuing hearts rather than game—had a long tradition in emblem literature and Renaissance decoration that Burne-Jones absorbed through his wide visual reading. Victoria and Albert Museum's holding of this work reflects the museum's historical interest in collecting Victorian decorative and fine art that blurred genre boundaries. Burne-Jones was among the leading figures in dissolving distinctions between high art and ornament: he designed windows, tapestries, tiles, and metalwork alongside painting. The canvas likely served as or related to a decorative scheme, the subject lending itself to the kind of playful mythological imagery that appeared in domestic Victorian interiors during the Aesthetic Movement's height.

Canvas in oil with a decorative compositional sensibility; the arrangement of figures likely emphasizes rhythmic placement over dramatic interaction. Surface handling combines smoothly blended flesh areas with richly worked landscape or floral ground elements appropriate to a hunting scene.