About this work
*Medea* (1889) is an oil painting now held at the Williamson Art Gallery in Birkenhead — and few works in De Morgan's output match its psychological intensity. Medea is dressed as a splendid queen, her unhappiness evident against echoing marble halls through which she wanders, a phial of poison meant for her rival Glauce smoking portentously in her hand.
The canvas is tall and narrow — 148 × 88 cm — concentrating the eye on a single, monumental female figure. The sumptuous Rose Madder gown that drapes Medea was chosen deliberately, symbolising a range of emotions from sadness and strength to regality and purity.
Doves on the floor, often associated with peace and innocence, suggest Medea is not acting with malice, while extinguished lamps emitting minimal smoke symbolise the impending doom and the passage of time as she grapples with her dark thoughts.
Where other Pre-Raphaelite women were almost dream-like or ephemeral, De Morgan's figure is strong, beautiful, and athletic.
De Morgan's idea for *Medea* likely came from William Morris's 1867 epic poem *The Life and Death of Jason*, which reinterprets the classical narrative, casting Medea as a tormented soul rather than an archetypal heartless sorceress.
The artist exhibited the work alongside a stanza from Morris's poem at the New Gallery in 1890, foregrounding the significance of this revisionist perspective.
In painting Medea this way, De Morgan rewrites the murderous mother of the classical world as a wronged woman whose magical powers should have attracted respect, not the cruel dismissal she received from the faithless Jason.
Her approach showcases a deep understanding of the psychological impact that deceitful behaviour could have on silenced women who lacked agency — in ancient times and in her own — reflecting her feminist ideals.
De Morgan had treated the subject in a sculptured head as early as 1880 and made careful studies for this painting; the tall vertical format containing a single full-length female figure was one she had used from early in her career, but *Medea* marks the first of several sophisticated canvases in which she elaborates the settings and narrative contexts for her carefully selected heroines.
As wall art, *Medea* commands a space rather than merely occupying it. The vertical format and cool architectural backdrop — colonnaded halls receding into shadow — give it a gravitas suited to high-ceilinged rooms with strong natural light, where the Rose Madder of the gown can shift from amber to deep crimson across the day. It speaks most directly to viewers drawn to myth, psychological complexity, and the longer history of how women
