Briar Wood Romance
Watercolor, gouache, color pencil, and graphite, 19”x 14”
Pre-Raphaelite artists depicted tangled vines in many ‘romantic’ scenes, including the Briar Wood
painting by Edward Burne-Jones. A pomegranate, surrounded by a thorny tangle symbolizes resurrection
from man’s relics of bygone civilization.
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| © Donald B. Myer, 2011 ❖
Pomegranate
Watercolor, Gouache, & Color Pencil, 19”x 14”
Symbolizing life, death, resurrection, birth, fertility, marriage, and prosperity, the pomegranate was rich
in Judeo-Christian lore. Daniel Gabriel Rossetti’s 1874 painting, Proserpine shows the daughter of
Demeter, the Mother of Crops, contemplating the pomegranate with its amazing powers.
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Pot of Basil - Isabella & Lorenzo
Watercolor, gouache, color pencil, and ink, 19”x 14”
“Fair Isabel, poor simple Isabel” as published by John Keats in 1820, took the head of her murdered
lover, Lorenzo, and “...calmed its wild hair with a golden comb......for its tomb did choose a garden
pot....and o’er it set Sweet Basil, which her tears kept ever wet.” This scene was captured by William
Holman Hunt in his painting, Isabella and the Pot of Basil.
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| © Donald B. Myer, 2010 |
See more of Don's work here.
