Bernard Hall first exhibited The quest with a verse from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: ‘I sent my soul through the Invisible/ Some letter of that After-life to spell’. The 12th-century Persian poem The Rubaiyat was translated into English in 1859 and, with its mystic, exotic philosophy and sensual imagery, became a popular source of inspiration. The work of symbolist poets such as Mallarmé and Verlaine had also been influential in Australia since the late 1890s. The quest was an important symbolist painting because it introduced to the Australian public the types of symbolist works popularised in Europe by artists such as G.F. Watts and Gustave Moreau. Hall used a composition derived from Watts and previous artists – that of a woman seated on a globe symbolic of the spheres. Yet his is the most pared-down allegory, his female figure holding no identifying objects to give clues as to her purpose. Suggestive rather than didactic, Hall gives the viewers’ imagination full rein to impose their own interpretation of the nature of the subject’s quest. The figure floats mysteriously, her face in shadow – anonymous – and her hair becoming a long flimsy swathe that curves round the globe, suggesting an ethereal soul drifting into space. The contemplative mood suggests that this is an inner quest, not a physical journey such as that pursued in Arthurian legend. Hall’s first wife had died in 1901 and perhaps his thoughts were turning towards the passage of the soul to an afterlife. (http://littlelimpstiff14u2.tumblr.com/)