Aurora Triumphans

Dawn arrives with a fanfare

Three red-winged figures sound long trumpets against a changing sky. Beneath them, a darkly robed figure turns away while a woman at the right loosens flower-strewn bonds. Evelyn De Morgan makes the passage from night to morning into a struggle between personified forces.

Aurora Triumphans belongs to the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum in Bournemouth, which dates it 1886. The Latin title means “Triumphant Aurora”. Aurora is the Roman goddess of dawn, and her emergence gives the painting its subject.

The image is more complicated than a beautiful sunrise. The departing darkness, the awakening body and the trumpeters describe different stages of change. They do not all occupy the same emotional moment.

Aurora is still removing what has held her

The awakening goddess sits at the right among flowers and cords. Her body is comparatively pale against the dark rocks. A floral crown frames her face, but her attention falls towards the bonds she is removing.

Her position matters. She has not risen to join the standing trumpeters. Dawn is announced above while liberation remains a physical action below: something has to be loosened before the figure can move freely.

Flowers are not only background decoration. They accompany the cords and gather around the body, bringing beauty into the very area where restraint is being undone. The painting refuses a completely simple division between an ugly captivity and a beautiful release.

Night turns her face away

The figure at the left is wrapped in heavy blue and purple fabric. An arm rises over the head while the other hand reaches towards the ground. The face is concealed by the posture and covering.

Night’s dark cloak spreads widely across the foreground. It appears to carry a portion of darkness with it, even as the sky behind has begun to brighten. The figure’s retreat is therefore visible through colour and direction as well as through personification.

The two foreground bodies answer one another without becoming twins. One is heavily draped and turning away; the other is exposed to the new light and occupied with release. Their different gestures make time into an encounter between figures.

The announcement is carried by bodies, hands and instruments

The trumpeters do not hold their instruments at identical angles. One stretches across the sky to the left, another rises towards the right and the middle instrument points downward. Together they distribute the imagined sound through the painting.

In the central figure, the mouth, hands and long tube form an extended line through the body’s surrounding drapery. Fingers are placed along the instrument while its bell reaches towards the lower part of the composition.

The poses give an audible idea a visible structure. We cannot hear the fanfare, but the direction of each instrument encourages us to imagine where it travels. The broad wings make the announcement feel larger than the three bodies alone.

Feathers make colour into a repeated pattern

The red wings are assembled from individual feather shapes. Their repetition produces dense areas of colour without making the surface seem flat. The feathers turn, overlap and darken towards the body.

Gold-toned garments offer another kind of pattern. Their small scale-like forms are more compact than the long feathers, and the cloth gathers into heavy folds. The winged figures seem richly equipped for the coming light.

The palette sets these reds and golds against Night’s deep blues. The contrast is visible before we have learned the figures’ names. Colour is doing narrative work, establishing different forces within a single landscape.

A natural cycle becomes a way to picture renewal

The De Morgan Foundation connects the artist’s repeated images of dawn with her Spiritualist belief in the continuing life of the soul. Night, sleep, death and reawakening could offer related ways to imagine change.

That context supports a reading of this dawn as more than a daily weather event. It does not require us to give every flower a fixed spiritual meaning. The larger movement from darkness and bonds towards light and freedom already carries the idea.

A surviving preparatory study in the Foundation’s collection differs markedly from the final arrangement. The three trumpeting figures became more dynamic, and the two foreground personifications were added to the developed composition. The final picture grew through decisions about how to make an abstract transition visible.

The painting once circulated under the wrong artist’s name

Both the Russell-Cotes museum and the De Morgan Foundation recount the work’s misattribution to Edward Burne-Jones. A changed monogram and misleading date helped it pass under his name before Evelyn’s authorship was recognised.

The institutional accounts differ in details of the altered inscription and early dating. This article follows the holding museum’s 1886 date and does not treat a doctored signature as reliable evidence. The essential history is the recovery of De Morgan’s authorship.

That recovery changes the way we encounter the painting. Its ambition belongs to an artist whose work could be displaced by a more commercially familiar male name. Discover more of these careers in our guide to famous women artists.

Questions about Aurora Triumphans

What does the title mean?

“Triumphant Aurora”, referring to the Roman goddess of dawn.

Who are the foreground figures?

The holding museum identifies the awakening figure at the right as Aurora and the darkly cloaked departing figure at the left as Night.

Where is the original?

Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum, Bournemouth. It is an oil painting on canvas, approximately 118.5 × 173.9 centimetres.

Was it painted by Burne-Jones?

No. The work was misattributed to him, with an altered monogram contributing to the confusion. Its recognised artist is Evelyn De Morgan.

Sources and image credit

• Russell-Cotes: Gallery II catalogue, Aurora Triumphans, BORGM 00665
• De Morgan Foundation: Evelyn De Morgan’s dawns
• De Morgan Foundation: Study for Aurora Triumphans, D_EDM_0408
• De Morgan Foundation: Misattribution of Aurora, an account differing in early dating
• Musei San Domenico: 2024 exhibition list, medium and dimensions

Faithful public-domain reproduction of Aurora Triumphans, via Wikimedia Commons. Detail images are crops of the same historical painting; no reconstruction or upscaling.