Last week I posted Evelyn De Morgan’s Hope in a Prison of Despair (seen above) on the Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood Facebook page. A happy byproduct of sharing things on the Pre-Raph Sisterhood Facebook page is that when people comment, like, or share the post, it pops up in my own feed again. I noticed that the more I saw the image…
In a post a few years ago, I said that my love of Pre-Raphaelite art probably stems from my lifelong love of stories. Much of the Pre-Raphaelites’ work presents a narrative often inspired by literature and myth. I have noticed recently that a number of Victorian artworks are not just the telling of a story, but a depiction of a…
Above is Sir John Everett Millais’ painting Mariana, which I’ve blogged about before in this post. Her dress is bluer than blue, the stained glass is exquisite, but let us have a moment of silence for the little mouse who died for Millais to include him in the work. “But where was the mouse to paint from? Millais’ father, who…
In Listening to my Sweet Pipings, Waterhouse has shown the figure of Earth reclining as Pan serenades her. Notice that Earth holds a poppy in her hand while Pan wears one in his hair. The title of Waterhouse’s painting is taken from Hymn of Pan by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The notion of Nature as feminine is an ancient one, dating…
