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 models included his sisters-in-law Alice…
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Proserpine and Blogging About Art
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 that theme in different ways.…
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Don’t look back!
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 compelled to follow her into…
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Demeter and Persephone
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 rebirth of vegetation, but it…
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Image of the Week: Autumn Leaves
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 has yet conceived; and also,…
