The Hours

The Hours, painted in 1882 and now in the Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust, depicts the Horae — the Greek goddesses of the seasons and the orderly progression of time. In Hesiod's Theogony they are daughters of Zeus and Themis, personifications of natural order and the seasonal cycle. By the early 1880s Burne-Jones had firmly established himself as the leading painter of the Aesthetic movement in Britain, and his treatment of classical goddesses typically emphasised rhythmic compositional arrangement, Pre-Raphaelite intensity of colour, and a timeless, dream-like quality quite different from the archaeological realism of his Victorian classical contemporaries. The Hours as a subject invited a meditation on repetition, order, and the beauty of cyclical time — themes well suited to Burne-Jones's characteristic mode.

Burne-Jones organises the Horae as a processional frieze, their repeated similar forms creating the rhythmic visual pattern that was his signature compositional strength. Robes are handled in softly layered oil glazes that produce the characteristic luminous, tapestry-like surface of his mature work. Faces are his typical Aesthetic ideal — large-eyed, long-necked, intensely absorbed.