Elaine
Elaine takes its subject from Tennyson: the lily maid of Astolat, dead of unrequited love, floating downriver in her barge. Preuschen renders it in her signature flower-laden manner, fusing literary allegory with still life.
This is the work an American survey singled out at the Woman’s Building of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago — “Frau Von Preuschen’s ‘Elaine’ represents the lily maid of Astolat lying in her flower-strewn barge” — proof her reputation reached across the Atlantic in her lifetime.
