This early work by American Abstract Expressionists Clyfford Still was exhibited in the artist’s first solo exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim’s museum-gallery, Art of This Century in 1946. In the introduction to the exhibition's catalogue, Mark Rorhko wrote “For me, Still’s pictorial dramas are an extension of the Greek Persephone Myth.” It has been argued (by David Anfam) that Jamais depicts Persephone’s mother, Demeter, searching for her daughter, who has been abducted to the underworld by Hades. As the Goddess of Agriculture, Demeter’s quest devastates the harvest, corresponding to Still’s experience of the Dust Bowl in the American Great Plains in the 1930s.