I’m particularly happy to welcome Autumn this year, with its crisp breezes and the promise of adventure. Autumn Leaves, painted by Sir John Everett Millais, is a wonderful example of the beauty I find in the season. It is an impressive example of a Pre-Raphaelite twilight and Millais has captured an unmistakable Autumn glow. His…
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Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s painting Proserpine is an arresting and visually striking work. Blogging about it once has never been enough; it resurfaces in my posts again and again. The myth of Proserpine/Persephone is a story that resonates with me on multiple levels, so I think that in writing about it I am attempting to explore…
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Orpheus was given his lyre by the god Apollo and it was the Muses that taught him how to play. His gift for music enchanted all living things: wild beasts, trees and even stones. After his journeys with the Argonauts, Orpheus married his love Eurydice. When Eurydice died from a snake bite, grief-stricken Orpheus felt…
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In De Morgan’s painting, we see Demeter as she mourns the loss of her daughter. Stricken with grief, she clasps her head–surrounded by shafts of wheat, denoting Demeter’s role as goddess of the harvest. The tale of Demeter and Persephone personifies the depth of a mother’s love. It is a myth about the death and…
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Autumn Leaves , Sir John Everett Millais. Models: Millais’ sisters-in-law modeled for two of the girls, the other two were local girls, who also appeared in Millais’ painting The Blind Girl. John Ruskin, who incidentally has previously been married to the artist’s wife Effie Millais, wrote about Autumn Leaves, saying: “by much the most poetical work the artist…
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As Rossetti often did, he wrote a sonnet to accompany his striking painting of Proserpine (model: Jane Morris) Afar away the light that brings cold cheer Unto this wall, – one instant and no more Admitted at my distant palace-door Afar the flowers of Enna from this drear Dire fruit, which, tasted once, must thrall…
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