The portrait depicts Edith as Circe in the Italian Garden. She is surrounded by the Sirens, her three youngest daughters: Margaret, Helen and Mairi. In the background, the concrete herms are visible, but instead of depicting the faces of Odysseus's sailors, they depict the faces of Charley (Edith's husband) and of the Brock himself.
The central figure of the painting is of course Edith, painted in flowing, sea green robes. Brock replaced the golden belt, usually shown around Circe’s waist, with a Celtic style brooch pinned on Edith’s left shoulder, in the tradition of a Scottish clan chief’s wife. The large gold cup in Edith’s hand alludes to the potion used by Circe to bring Odysseus under her spell. It is based on the Sunderland Cup, an enormous silver-gilt cup produced in around 1690, that can be seen in the silver display off the Central Hall of the House. It was acquired nearly a century earlier by her husband's forbears, Charles, Lord Stewart and his second wife Lady France Anne Vane-Tempest.
In this way, Brock's picture evokes mythology, symbolism, family history and ancestry - the very things that informed Edith's designs for the gardens at Mount Stewart.
From illustrations to topiary
In 1928, Edith wrote a children's book called 'The Magic Ink-Pot', a tale deeply steeped in Irish mythology. Edmond Brock supplied many of the illustrations which depict the Tuatha de Danann, a supernatural tribe in Irish mytholoy, and their struggle against the wicked Fomorians, a race of half human, half demon creatures.
While the trefoil hedge was growing around the Shamrock Garden, Edith proposed a whimsical narrative in topiary, based on the adventures described in The Magic Ink-Pot.