By the Waters of Babylon

Evelyn De Morgan painted 'By the Waters of Babylon' in 1882, taking her title from Psalm 137 — the great lament of the Jewish exiles in Babylon, who hung their harps on the willows and wept when their captors asked them to sing songs of Zion in a foreign land. The Psalm is one of the most moving expressions of exile and cultural grief in the Western literary tradition, and for De Morgan it offered an opportunity to combine her love of music, her spiritual depth, and her skill in painting the female figure in attitudes of deep feeling. By 1882 she was developing her mature style, having trained under Burne-Jones's influence and absorbed the lessons of Italian Quattrocento painting that shaped the aesthetic idiom she shared with Spencer Stanhope and other late Pre-Raphaelite painters. The subject of exile and longing resonated with De Morgan's persistent meditation on the soul's estrangement from its true home.

The oil on canvas employs De Morgan's developing mature technique: clear, jewel-like colour, precisely drawn figures in attitudes of emotional depth, and a setting that combines the specific (willows, river) with the symbolically charged. The harps hanging in the willows provide a visual focal point for the painting's meditation on silenced music and suppressed longing.