Group IX

Context: within The Paintings for the Temple, Hilma gives shape to The Dove series, where this Christian symbol of peace lives alongside a scene of combat, the fight between Saint George and the dragon, which she linked to her own story.

Interpretation: the piece does not reproduce the whole scene but isolates its core — the heart wrapped in golden rings — leaving out the cross, the spiral and the spheres. What interests us is the frame around the conflict, not the conflict itself; the space where something is resolved rather than the dispute, rather than the fight.

Technique: we turn those golden rings into the red-petalled flower that holds the heart. Instead of enclosing it in concentric circles, we set it on a base that opens outwards, as if the heart, now calm, had found somewhere to settle. The mirror finish reproduces the same effect as the painting: a centre that gives light back instead of absorbing it.

Source: The Dove, No. 8, Group IX, Series SUW/SW, 1915.