Proserpine Gathering Flowers by William Bell Scott. c.1865-66. Watercolour and gouache on paper, 27 ½ X 17¼ inches (69.9 x 43.8 cm). Private collection.
This watercolour was exhibited at the Dudley Gallery in 1866. An old label in Scott’s hand attached on the backing states, “Proserpine/gathering flowers/Herself the fairest flower, by gloomy Dis/Was gathered.” This watercolour was executed c.1865-66 at the time when Scott was living at 133 Elgin Road in Notting Hill.
Proserpine was the goddess of Spring. When picking flowers in the vale of Enna she was abducted by Pluto, the god of the underworld. Jupiter, at the behest of her mother Ceres, commanded that she be allowed to return to earth providing that she’d eaten nothing in the underworld. Unfortunately Proserpine had eaten six pomegranate seeds so she was only allowed to return for half the year, thus explaining the mythological reason for the seasons. Proserpine was a popular subject with Victorian artists with versions by D. G. Rossetti, Frederic Leighton, Walter Crane and J. W. Waterhouse. Scott’s painting predates Rossetti’s many versions of this subject, the earliest of which was a chalk drawing dating to 1871. Although Pluto does not appear in Scott’s painting, two female figures in the background can be seen fleeing in terror at his approach.
The background was probably studied from the Ayrshire coast near Penkill Castle where Scott spent his summer months. This is another example of Scott being influenced by the second wave of Pre-Raphaelitism and Aesthetic Classicism in the 1860s. A critic for The Art Journal recognized this in his review of the Dudley Gallery exhibition: “In Mr. William Scott’s ‘Proserpine,’ we pass from Pre-Raphaelite to Post-Raphaelite styles. This effective revival shows in sumptuous guise the rapturous colour of the Venetian school.” (Art Journal 28 (1866): 71.
When this watercolour was exhibited at the Dudley Gallery in 1866 the reviewer for The Athenaeum made these comments: “Few artists can tell a story or express an idea in its thoroughness so well as Mr. W. B. Scott: witness his Proserpine (110), - the fair daughter of the goddess gathering poppies in a high and windy field of Sicily; the basket is at her feet, a few sullen blooms are laid carefully therein, the stubble of the land is rife; the background is formed by a sky with hard and gathering clouds; a purple promontory that rebuts an angry sea. The damsel hesitates in her task, and looks up, listening, as if she heard the rattle of thunder in the clouds, or, it may be, that of iron wheels upon the hardened earth; all about her is darkening. The picture lacks a little refinement in painting, but is pregnant with meaning and poetic sense.” (Athenaeum, No. 1997, (February 3, 1866): 177).
Last modified 6 February 2022