This cartoon was Newland’s principal work of her Scholarship at The British School at Rome. In correspondence with the Secretary of the school she described it as the central panel of a triptych for which she never intended to produce the side panels and which she neither intended to complete as a painting.
Ceres, according to Ancient Roman myth, was the goddess of agriculture, grain crops, fertility and motherly relationships. Newland returned to the same composition at the end of the decade ‚Äì a related pencil drawing entitled Composition, The Legend of Ceres is dated 1949 – and in 1950 at the Royal Academy Newland exhibited a variation on the theme, entitled Three Marys, which was loosely inspired by this earlier decorative composition.