I love this painting, with its detail and drama, as well as the story behind it, so I was delighted to be able to give a short talk on it at the Barber Institute’s ‘Scent and the Art of the Pre-Raphaelites’ exhibition. I thought I’d share a bit of it here.
Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919) had an eclectic education at home, with textbooks written by her mother, and governesses. Although she decided from a fairly young age that she was going to be a painter, she also wrote poems and stories as a child, and many of them are inspired by myths, including Norse and Greek tales. So we know that she had a good grounding in these stories, and many of the figures from them appear in her later paintings, often as strong women in dramatic works such as Medea (1889). As an adult she was a trailblazing artist, determined, independent and successful despite the barriers put in place for women artists; she also was interested in women’s suffrage, as well as spiritualism. She painted in a Pre-Raphaelite style, and had family connections to the Pre-Raphaelites (such as her uncle, John Roddam Spencer Stanhope) as well as knowing many of them professionally and socially. Her paintings, with their focus on women from history and legend, also puts her firmly in the Pre-Raphaelite tradition, and of course there are other depictions of Medea, such as Frederick Sandys (1868) and Waterhouse’s Jason and Medea (1907).
De Morgan’s Medea is a more sympathetic figure than some. Her story, most famously from Euripides’ play but also appearing in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, is that she is a princess, the grand-daughter of Helios, the sun-god, and she is similarly fiery and also a witch. She helps Jason to steal the golden fleece from her father, King Aetes of Colchis, and leaves Colchis with Jason; they never marry, but have two sons. In Corinth where they settle Medea is seen as barbaric, an outcast, perhaps because she had participated in the murder of her brother when escaping from Colchis. Jason tires of her, and tells her he is planning to marry Glauce, a princess of Corinth (so that ultimately he would be a king). Medea offers Glauce a golden robe as a wedding present, but it is poisoned and she dies, along with her father Creon. Medea then murders her own two sons – she is shown as undecided, regretful, in the sources, but wants to make Jason suffer. At the end she is whisked away in Helios’s chariot. In context, both she and Jason are victims of Fate and have little free will, and yet her revenge is peculiarly horrible.
De Morgan was in fact inspired by Morris’s The Life and Death of Jason (1867), which suggests that Medea was driven to madness by Jason’s behaviour; Morris thus mutes her anger, and shows her suffering clearly: “O sons, with what sweet counsels and what tears / Would I have hearkened to the hopes and fears / Of your first loves . . . / But now—but now—”. The painting was exhibited with this extract from Morris’s painting:
“Day by day,
she saw the happy time fade fast away,
And as she fell from out that happiness,
Again she grew to be the sorceress,
Worker of fearful things, as once she was.”
Medea is hardly the Angel in the House, then. Yet the subject was popular in the 19th century, with several translations as well as paintings, and it has been suggested that this may be due to changes in divorce laws for cruelty and desertion. Medea is figured, then and now, as feminist, sexual, dangerous, and as a representation of the power of women’s anger, which is something to be feared. (The fascination with Medea continues; there is a recent novel by Rose Hewlett, Medea, which looks at the story again). Even Christine de Pisan in 15th century argues that Circe and Medea were not witches but female scientific pioneers:
She knew the powers of every herb and all the potions which could be concocted, and she was ignorant of no art which can be known. With her spells she knew how to make the air become cloudy or dark, how to move winds from the grottoes and caverns of the earth, and how to provoke other storms in the air as well as how to stop the flow of rivers, confect poisons, create fire to burn up effortlessly whatever object she chose, and all such similar arts.
De Morgan depicts Medea holding a potion, which must be the poison for Glauce’s dress (Frederick Sandys picks the same moment). She has a haunted expression yet doesn’t appear mad – Jan Marsh says she seems to be ‘more in sorrow than in anger’. The colour of the solution in bottle and also the violet vapour is consistent with iodine – which can cause burning of the skin, asphyxiation and death, which fits in neatly until I discovered (from Christina Bradstreet, who curated the exhibition) that this was before the discovery of iodine. Oh well. But in the spirit of the exhibition, I invite you to consider what the scene in this painting might smell like. What does the room smell like? I feel the potion would have a strong, sharp smell that is irritating to the nostrils (like iodine, perhaps, even though I now know it isn’t!) The lamp has been put out and is smoking, so the acrid scent of smoke would also be present. There is an abandoned, crushed red rose on the floor, the scent of which might just be apparent (and is a symbol of discarded love). The marble walls mean it would be cool, and it’s open to the city of Corinth in the background at sunrise, so we can expect also the fresh smell of day. Combined with these smells, there is the sound of the birds cooing (there are white doves – which, ironically, can mean new beginnings). The pearls in her hair symbolise tears; the lions on the floor indicate strength. Overall, then, this Medea draws on the senses in a way which engages and involves the viewer. We are witnesses – which seems very appropriate image for a tragic heroine of Greek theatre.
You can listen to the Pre-Raphaelite Podcast with Christina Bradstreet on the Scent exhibition here.