The Fate of Persephone. 1878. Oil and tempera on canvas; 48 1/4 x 105 1/8 inches (122.5 x 267 cm). Private collection. Image © 2002 Christie's Images Limited, appearing here by kind permission (right click disabled; not to be reproduced).
Crane showed The Fate of Persephone, one of his largest works and a masterpiece of Aesthetic Classicism, as his principal exhibit at the second Grosvenor Gallery exhibition held in 1878, no. 119. It was his follow-up to The Renascence of Venus, which he had exhibited the previous year. In comparing the two, Isobel Spencer feels The Fate of Persephone is more dynamic in its design, finding "Pluto's black stallions make a striking contrast with a fine colour scheme of yellow and white draped figures and flowers" (75). When it was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery, The Fate of Persephone was accompanied in the catalogue by these lines from Milton's Paradise Lost:
The Fate of Persephone
that fair field
Of Enna, where Proserpine, gathering flowers,
Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis
Was gathered. [Book IV, lines 268-71]
In later life, in a letter to Samuel Martin of 1 November 1896, Crane had no hesitation in describing the painting as one of his "principal and largest pictures." Its importance to the artist is shown by the fact that it was widely exhibited in his lifetime. It was shown at the Victorian Era Exhibition in Earl's Court in 1897, no. 50. It was then exhibited at the Walter Crane Exhibition at the Iparmuveszeti Museum in Budapest in in 1900 and subsequently shown in Vienna, Darmstadt, Düsseldorf, and Frankfurt in 1900-01, and possibly at the International Exhibition held at Turin in 1902. Despite its importance, the painting remained unsold until it was purchased by Hans Thoma for the Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe when it was shown at the Karlsruhe, Jubiläums – Kunstaustellung in 1902.
In classical Greek mythology Persephone was the daughter of Zeus and Demeter. While picking flowers with her maidens in a meadow in the Vale of Enna, the eternal grove of spring in Sicily, Persephone is seen by her uncle Hades, who overcome with lust abducts her to be the queen of the underworld. Upon learning of the abduction her mother Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, in her misery became unconcerned with the harvest or the fruitfulness of the earth, and this led to widespread famine. Zeus therefore intervened and sent Hermes to order Hades to release Persephone to her mother. Because Hades had tricked Persephone into eating pomegranate seeds in the underworld, however, she could not be completely freed but had to remain half of the year with Hades in the underworld, while spending the other half in the upper world with Demeter. The ancient Greeks used this story to explain the changing of the seasons. Persephone's annual return to the earth in spring saw the growth of new grain and the flowering of plants while her return to the underworld in the autumn and winter months led to the dying of plant life.
Close-up of the central group (right click disabled; not to be reproduced).
Morna O'Neill considers this work to be an "art for art's sake" presentation of the mythological woman as the embodiment of beauty (36). In Crane's portrayal of the myth Persephone is shown picking flowers clad in a white classical gown and yellow overgarment. The flowers are narcissi, symbolic of the fact that Persephone was the goddess of spring. Her right arm has been grasped by Hades, clad in armour and helmet with a red cloak and clutching a trident in his left hand. She is about to be placed on Hades' golden chariot, drawn by two black rearing steeds, symbolic of the underworld, and abducted. Persephone's companions with a look of alarm on their faces can be seen picking flowers off to the left. A landscape, similar to works by the Etruscan School of which Crane was a member, can be seen in the background of this frieze-like composition.
In his Reminiscences, Crane gave his account of the iconography of the painting:
Pluto [Hades] and his black horses and gilded biga [two-horse chariot] are supposed to have suddenly emerged from a volcanic fissure in the earth in Enna, and surprised the goddess as she stooped to pluck the fateful narcissus. Her figure, in white with a yellow mantle, is relieved against the black horses rearing up behind her, as Pluto, in Roman armour and fanciful helmet, lays his hand upon her. Her three frightened maiden attendants, like the fates, witness the scene, divided from Persephone by the crack in the earth. The foreground is covered with flowers, chiefly narcissus and anemones; a mountainous country sloping to the dark horizon of the sea with blossoming orchards and the walls and towers of a city with a peak in eruption beyond form the landscape background. A pomegranate tree in blossom in front suggests the legend of Persephone and the promise of her return to earth, while a tiny figure on the mountain was meant to indicate the sorrow of Demeter. [188]
When the painting came up for auction at Christie's in 2002, John Christian and Morna O'Neill felt the Crane's principal two classical works dealt primarily with the themes of death and regeneration:
In The Renaissance of Venus and Persephone, the themes of death and re-birth are treated in more overtly mythological terms. While the birth of the goddess of beauty is the subject of the first, the second shows the rape (or "fate," in Crane's Victorian euphemism) of another deity, an image which to the ancients symbolised beauty's eclipse. Crane had already illustrated the Persephone myth in a watercolour entitled Pluto's Garden that he had shown at the Dudley Gallery in 1870... The Fate of Persephone may show the fatal rape, but, as Crane himself observed in the description quoted above, there are strong hints that all is not lost, that beauty will return in due course. A pomegranate tree spreads its flowering branches over the cavernous entrance to Hades, while in one of the most attractive passages in the painting, daffodils, jonquils, anemones and narcissi blossom luxuriantly in the foreground. Morna O'Neill is surely right to point out that Crane's ability to hint at such a narrative continuum owes much to his experience as an illustrator. She also suggests that, far from merely picking a convenient literary tag when he quoted from Paradise Lost in the Grosvenor catalogue, he was deliberately invoking one of the supreme expressions of the theme of redemption and regeneration. [109]
O'Neill in her book on Crane has these further pertinent comments on the painting:
It is as if the characters in The Fate of Persephone are already works of art. Here the earth has split open almost beneath Persephone's feet. Carefully posed, she grasps her mantle as she witnesses her last vestige of spring…. The static Pluto is the antithesis of action, heightening the ominous stillness of the moment. Although the fissure cuts across the winding riverscape, the wild black chargers seem frozen in a balletic performance. The cavernous hole emits a powerful wind, ruffling manes and animating Pluto's cloak, suspended in the air as a fluted canopy of red…. The static quality allows for a dramatic pause, a moment Crane described in sculptural terms: Persephone "is relieved against the black horses rearing up behind her, as Pluto lays his hands upon her." Her companions act as a chorus conveying subdued emotions. All is rendered with a muted palette of limited tonalities, a thoughtful selection of greens and yellows that evokes an atmosphere of classical calm. [36-37]
Christian and O'Neill feel the subject matter of Crane's The Fate of Persephone was influenced by literary sources such as William Morris's The Earthly Paradise (1868-70) and Walter Pater's essay "The Myth of Demeter and Persephone," published in the Fortnightly Review early in 1876 (110). They also felt Crane's treatment of the subject was unmistakeably influenced by Italian Renaissance art such as Sandro Botticelli's Primavera at the Uffizi that he saw during his honeymoon in Florence in 1871: "Comparable in size and shape, the pictures share a freize-like composition and a number of motifs: a central, elegantly posed and draped female figure, a group of three nymphs - whether Graces of Fates - with still more balletic poses, and above all a foreground composed of a greensward powdered with flowers" (111). Christian and O'Neill felt other artistic debts may exist as well: "Pluto's chariot, for instance, is reminiscent of those in Mantegna's Triumph of Ceasar cartoons at Hampton Court. More important, however, is the flat, decorative quality of the painting, giving it the effect of a tapestry or mural" (111).
The subject of Persephone [Greek] or Proserpine [Roman] proved irresistible over an extended period of time to Victorian artists associated with the Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Movements. William Bell Scott's early watercolour Proserpine Gathering Flowers dates from c.1865-66. Rossetti's numerous versions of Proserpine, featuring Jane Morris holding a pomegranate, date from the early 1870s. E. J. Poynter painted several versions of this subject, including one he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1869, and his Proserpine of 1871. Frederic Leighton's Return of Persephone was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1891. Evelyn De Morgan's painting Demeter Mourning Persephone dates to 1906, while John William Waterhouse's Persephone showing the goddess gathering flowers in a meadow dates to 1912. Frederic Sandys large coloured chalk drawing of Persephone dates to 1878. Even Edward Burne-Jones made two pencil drawings of the subject, a study for The Rape of Proserpine [Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery and Montreal Museum of Fine Arts], although he carried this idea no further.
A watercolour study for Crane's painting sold at Christie's, London, on June 14, 1991, lot 10. As John Christian has noted about this work: "Though quite highly finished, it still shows him experimenting with the poses of the principal figures. In fact no element, including the attitudes of the attendant maidens, the position of the horses, the landscape and the overall colour scheme has yet to be fully resolved" (107). A number of additional preliminary sketches for this composition are in the collection of the Chelsea and Kensington Public Library (Local Studies Collection) and seven compositional studies are in the collection of the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (WCA.1.4.6.49 - WCA.1.4.6.55).
Contemporary Reviews of the Painting
When the painting was shown at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1878 it received mixed reviews from the critics, many of which were unfavourable. W. M. Rossetti, the critic for The Academy, felt this type of work was not Crane's proper métier, describing it as "a large work of considerable pretension and no little achievement," but adding, "We do not think, however, that it is quite within the proper range of Mr. Crane's faculty: it comes rather too near to classical severity and completeness, and does not sufficiently draw upon those powers of capricious fancy, romantically irresponsible, with which he is richly endowed" (447). The Art Journal mentions Crane's name only in passing, finding the picture an "adequate example" by one of the artists who were among the "thoughtful and gifted disciples of this quasi-classic, semi-mystic school" (155). /p>
F. G. Stephens in The Athenaeum also failed to be impressed, calling Crane's "large enterprise"
an unsatisfactory production, we fear, to the painter as well as to the spectator. Proserpine is seized by a very mild young Pluto, younger than any king of Hades we ever saw before, and younger than Pluto ever was, except in the period of the concealment from his ravenous father, with Mars' helmet, or rather a Roman gladiator's helmet, and holding a lister or trident – the tridens of the retiarius, a weapon usually belonging to Neptune or to Britannia on old penny-pieces. These archeological matters are a little or no importance; but what shall we say of the three nymphs, each one posing in an isolated way irrespective of composition? The public has derived the greatest pleasure from Mr. Walter Crane's published works, but this picture belongs to a different class of Art altogether, which we cannot think so good" (642).
A reviewer for The Illustrated London News found Crane's treatment of this work to be full of extravagance:
Mr. Walter Crane appears as the exhibitor of no less than ten works, in all of which he approves himself to be an art disciple and candid imitator of the style, manner, and feeling of Mr. E. Burne-Jones. The most important and the most meritorious of Mr. Walter Crane's performances is The Fate of Persephone (119). Proserpine, gathering flowers in the fair field of Enna, was therefrom, as Milton tells us, "gathered" by gloomy Dis; and a very gloomy Dis, or Pluto, has Mr. Crane depicted in the act of deporting the daughter of Demeter, otherwise Ceres, in a chariot drawn by two alarmingly coal-black steeds. The picture constitutes a glowing picturesque piece of decoration; but it is otherwise - its drawing, composition, and treatment full of extravagance. [435]
The most extensive review of the painting was in Henry Blackburn's Grosvenor Notes:
The artist communicates the following as to the intention of the picture, which has been to dwell rather on the symbolical aspect of the myth. Persephone, embodying the genius of Spring – the new budding fairness of life - overshadowed by Winter, dimly anticipates her destiny, as Aidoneus [Hades], half lover and half fiend, inexorable as Time and Death, with his horses of darkness, rises from the chasm in the earth to bear her away to his shadowy home, whence only she returns to the world in her season. This recurrence is suggested by the design of the wheel of the chariot, in which the figures of the four seasons resolve. Across the chasm grows a little flowering tree of pomegranate, the fruit of which, tasted by Persephone, seals her fate in Hades; and at her feet, and in her basket, is the fateful narcissus, by which she was ensnared. Her attendant maidens, as more human and mortal, are frightened and surprised at the sight of the terrible horses that trample the flowers in the "fair field of Enna." A sudden cloud overshadows the spring landscape, and a wind blights the blossoms with its chilly breath, "ruffling up the edges of the sea." Etna flames above the awestruck city, and, on the edge of the chasm far off, a little grieving figure stands for the sorrow of Demeter. In this picture, the horses are black; the prevailing colours are yellow, orange, and brown in the draperies; white of flowers and blue of hills. [40-41]
Despite the many reservations expressed by the critics, Crane was relieved to hear his picture had at least found favour with his mentor Edward Burne-Jones. Crane's friend George Howard wrote to him from Venice: "I have not seen many newspaper criticisms of the Grosvenor, so I do not know what our instructors say about your work this time, but I heard from Ned Jones, whose opinion we value a little more, who was really greatly pleased with your Proserpine" (qtd. in Crane 188). Christian and O'Neill suggest that in the ironical use of the word "instructors," and the suggestion that a fellow artist's opinion is worth more than any professional critic's, implies that "Howard knew Crane was disappointed with press reaction to his picture, and was deliberately relaying a countervailing opinion he was bound to value" (112).
Bibliography
Blackburn, Henry. Grosvenor Notes. London: Chatto and Windus (May 1878): 40-41.
Christian, John and Morna O'Neill. Important British Art. London: Christie's (12 June 2002); lot 44, 102-13.
Crane, Walter. An Artist's Reminiscences. London: Methuen & Co., 1907. 188.
"The Grosvenor Gallery." The Art Journal New Series XVII (June 1878): 155.
"The Grosvenor Gallery." The Illustrated London News LXXII (11 May 1878): 435.
Konody, Paul G. The Art of Walter Crane. London: George Bell & Sons, 1902. 95 & 134.
O'Neill Morna. Walter Crane. The Arts and Crafts, Painting, and Politics, 1875-1890. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010, 19-20 & 35-45.
Rossetti, William Michael. "Fine Art. The Grosvenor Gallery." The Academy XIII (18 May 1878): 446-47.
Spencer, Isobel. Walter Crane. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co. Inc., 1975. 75.
Stephens, Frederic George. "Fine Arts. The Grosvenor Gallery." The Athenaeum No. 2638 (18 May 1878): 642.
Victorian Pictures, Drawings and Watercolours. London: Christie's (14 June 1991): lot 10.
Created 20 November 2025