Burne-Jones, Sir Edward Coley (1833-1898)         nglish painter, illustrator, and designer. He was destined for the Church, but his interest was turned to art first by William Morris, his fellow divinity student at Oxford, and then by Rossetti, to whom Burne-Jones apprenticed himself in 1856 and who remained the decisive influence on him. Like Rossetti, Burne-Jones painted in consciously aesthetic style, but his taste was more Classical and his elongated forms owe much to the examples of Botticelli. He favoured medieval and mythical subjects and hated such modernists as the Impressionists, describing their subjects as " landscapes and whores". His own ideas on painting are summed as follows: " I mean by picture a beautiful romantic dream than any that ever shone - in a land no-one can define or remember, only desire - and the forms divinely beautiful." He exhibited little before 1877, but then became quickly famous, with remarkably wide following abroad.     His work had considerable influence on the French Symbolists and the ethereally beautiful women who people his painting, like the more sensuous types of Rossetti, had a considerable progeny at the end of the century. Some of Burne- Jones finest work was done in association with William Morris (he was a founder member of Morris & Co. in 1861). notably as a designer of stained glass and tapestries, and as an illustrator of some of the Kelmscott Press books. The best collection of his work is in the City Art Gallery at Birmingham, his birthplace.