(via Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, by G. B.-J. )

I was reading Victoria Finlay’s wonderful “The Brilliant History of Color in Art”, and came across this interesting story in the chapter about mummy brown. In it, the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones performed a burial ceremony for a tube of mummy-brown paint, when he learned that it was actually made from real mummies.

In “Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones” (available on HathiTrust and the Internet Archive for free!), written by his widow Georgina, she recalls a get-together with some family friends…

“One of these times was remembered by us all as the day of the funeral of a tube of mummy-paint. We were sitting together after lunch in the orchard part of the Grange garden, the men talking about different colours that they used, when Mr.Tadema startled us by saying he had lately been invited to go and see a mummy that was in his colourman’s workshop before it was ground down into paint. Edward scouted the idea of the pigment having anything to do with a mummy — said the name must be only borrowed to describe a particular shade of brown — but when assured that it was actually compounded of real mummy, he left us at once, hastened to the studio, and returning with the only tube he had, insisted on our giving it decent burial there and then. So a hole was bored in the green grass at our feet, and we all watched it put safely in, and the spot was marked by one of the girls planting a daisy root above it.”

By Bullenwächter (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons