Proserpine (or Persephone), the daughter of Ceres (Demeter) and goddess of spring, was abducted by Pluto (Dis), lord of underworld, as she picked flowers in the value of Enna. At the behest of her mother, Jupiter commanded that she be allowed to return to earth for half the year, thus explaining in mythological terms the rotation of the seasons. In Scott's version Pluto does not appear, although the flowers bend in the wind created by his approach and two figures in the background flee in terror.

The picture must date from before 1870 when Scott moved from 33 Elgin Crescent, Notting Hill (the address inscribed on the back) to Bellevue House, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, near his friend D.G. Rossetti. It therefore predates any of the numerous versions of Rossetti's well-known painting Proserpine, which does not seem to have been planned until 1871. The background would appear to be inspired by the Ayrshire coast near Penkill Castle, Girvan, the ancestral home of Scott's mistress Alice Boyd, where he had spent the summer months since the mid-1880s. The picture may be seen as an expression of the classicism which touched so many British artists in the 1860s, permanently claiming such younger men as Leighton, Poynter and Albert Moore, but also influencing older Pre-Raphaelites like Brown, Scott and Rossetti.

A fine watercolour of the same subject by Walter Crane, dated 1877, was sold in these Rooms on 14 June 1991, lot 10