This article: Hope is traditionally considered by Christians as a theological virtue (a virtue associated with the grace of God, rather than with work or self-improvement). Since antiquity artistic representations of the personification depict her as a young woman, typically holding a flower or an anchor.During Watts's lifetime, European culture had begun to question the concept of hope. A new school of philosophy at the time, based on the thinking of Friedrich Nietzsche, saw hope as a negative attribute that encouraged humanity to expend their energies on futile efforts. The Long Depression of the 1870s wrecked both the economy and confidence of Britain, and Watts felt that the encroaching mechanisation of daily life, and the importance of material prosperity to Britain's increasingly dominant middle class, were making modern life increasingly soulless.
In late 1885 Watts's adopted daughter Blanche Clogstoun had just lost her infant daughter Isabel to illness, and Watts wrote to a friend that "I see nothing but uncertainty, contention, conflict, beliefs unsettled and nothing established in place of them." Watts set out to reimagine the depiction of Hope in a society in which economic decline and environmental deterioration were increasingly leading people to question the notion of progress and the existence of God.Other artists of the period had already begun to experiment with alternative methods of depicting Hope in art. Some, such as the upcoming young painter Evelyn De Morgan, drew on the imagery of Psalm 137 and its description of exiled musicians refusing to play for their captors. Meanwhile, Edward Burne-Jones, a friend of Watts who specialised in painting mythological and allegorical topics, in 1871 completed the cartoon for a planned stained glass window depicting Hope for St Margaret's Church in Hopton-on-Sea. Burne-Jones's design showed Hope upright and defiant in a prison cell, holding a flowering rod.Watts generally worked on his allegorical paintings on and off over an extended period, but it appears that... contains an answer for the question: What is the first name of the person whose design showed Hope upright and defiant in a prison cell, holding a flowering rod?, what is it ?


Edward