The De Morgan Collection, The De Morgan Foundation
Location History:
It was first exhibited at the inaugural show of the Grosvenor Gallery in London in 1877, where it was immediately sold to the Rt. Hon. John Mundella.
If you're checking out Evelyn De Morgan’s Ariadne in Naxos (1877), you're actually looking at a pretty massive milestone in her career. She painted this just after leaving the Slade School of Art, and it was the very first piece she exhibited at London's super influential Grosvenor Gallery. The painting tackles a classic Greek myth, showing the princess Ariadne stranded on the island of Naxos. Her lover, Theseus, has just abandoned her there—which is especially cold considering she had literally just helped him escape the Minotaur's Labyrinth.
What makes this piece so brilliant is how De Morgan completely flips the script on how this story was usually told. If you look at older Renaissance versions—like Titian's famous Bacchus and Ariadne hanging in the National Gallery—Ariadne is usually shown in a total frenzy or right in the middle of being rescued. But De Morgan went for something way quieter. She painted Ariadne after the initial anger had worn off, leaving her completely isolated, desolate, and just staring out across the water. By putting all the focus purely on her emotional isolation and tragedy, De Morgan used the canvas as a subtle critique of how her era's patriarchal society treated and abandoned women.
Visually, the whole piece perfectly nails the Aesthetic movement vibe with its dreamlike, desolate beach and meticulously painted drapery. De Morgan also packed the scene with some really smart symbolism:
The Red Robe: Ariadne is wrapped in a deep red, which is a color historically tied to the suffering of martyrs.
The Empty Seashells: If you check out the shoreline, it's scattered with shells. In classical art, seashells usually symbolize female sexuality and fertility. But because these are just empty husks, they basically represent the total, hollow death of her romance with Theseus.
Ultimately, De Morgan takes a really familiar, dramatic myth and strips away the action to give us a purely human, deeply sympathetic look at heartbreak and isolation.
I read Ariadne in Naxos less as a painting about abandonment alone and more as a painting about what remains after abandonment. De Morgan deliberately removes the dramatic rescue or confrontation that often makes mythological paintings exciting. Instead, Ariadne is left alone with the consequences of someone else’s decision. Her lowered posture, the vast empty landscape and the expanse of sea make her isolation feel almost physical. I find the painting particularly striking because Ariadne is not presented as hysterical or passive; she appears exhausted, as though the violence of betrayal has already happened and she is now forced to live with it. The red robe and scattered shells deepen this feeling, turning the landscape into something almost symbolic of a life and love that have been emptied out. To me, the painting therefore speaks beyond Greek mythology. It can be read as a meditation on the unequal consequences of love, abandonment and dependence, particularly for women. De Morgan’s decision to focus on Ariadne’s solitude gives the abandoned woman, rather than the heroic man or the dramatic rescue, the centre of the story.
