THEY'RE back!

The "jewel in the crown" of Southampton's very own art collection are back on view to the public

Thanks to £30,000 of funding Edward Burne-Jones' Perseus series are back on show in the Baring Room at Southampton City Art Gallery.

Funded by the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, the Idlewild Trust, The Arts Society Hampshire and Isle of Wight Area and with cash given directly to the Gallery through through its donations box the world famous gouache studies have all been re-glazed with low reflection Optium glass and their frames restored.

But they will only be in situ for the summer before six of the city's Burnes-Jones artworks are off again, this time to Tate Britain for a show dedicated to the "last of the pre-Raphaelites" himself.

The London exhibition will be the first in major retrospective of Burne-Jones' work for more than 40 years and will show off 150 of his works in different media, including painting, stained glass and tapestry.

But the Southampton pieces - which were bought using cash donated to the city for an art gallery by pharmacist Robert Chipperfield - will be some of the stars of the show.

City art conservator Rebecca Moisan, who has been working on the conservation project of the series for five years, said: "I always refer to the gallery as the jewel in the crown of the city's arts and heritage portfolio, and the Perseus series as the Kohinoor diamond if you like of the collection.

"They are amazing an amazing series, because there's so many of them together."

Experts at Tate Britain say Burne-Jones' work is "synonymous with a refined and spiritualised style of beauty", and his belief in the "redemptive power of art" lead him to becoming a pioneer of the symbolist movement.

From being an outsider in British art, and spending much of his life in isolation, Burne-Jones (1833–1898) became a key figure in the art world at the end of the 19th century.

He challenged society by disengaging his art from the modern world, offering a parallel universe based on myth, legend and the Bible. Working in a wide range of materials, he pioneered a radical new approach to narrative in works created for both public and intimate settings.

Now Southampton City Art Gallery curators are deciding which works to fill the Baring Room while the Perseus series is in London.

The works going to London are The Finding of Medusa, The Death of Medusa I and II, Atlas Turned to Stone, Perseus and the Sea Myths and The Baleful Head. The oil painting Launcelot at the Chapel of the Holy Grail has also been re-glazed and will also be part of the Tate Britain's Burne-Jones show.