By Emily Burkhart
November 14, 2024
Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919), Flora, 1894. Oil and gold leaf on canvas, 78 x 35 in. De Morgan Foundation Collection, Cannon Hall, Barnsley, UK. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
You are not to think that the only reason for doing Art is to make life beautiful.
The reality it teaches is true as well as beautiful.
-Evelyn De Morgan
British artist and proto-feminist Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919) used her oil paintings to engage with the political, social, and moral issues of Victorian England from prison reform to women’s suffrage. Painting was also the medium she chose to express her spiritualist beliefs and pacifist stance with regard to Britain’s involvement in the Boer War (1899-1902) in South Africa and the First World War (1914-1918). A prolific artist and draftswoman, De Morgan was commercially and financially successful during her life, with solo shows and financial independence unusual for female artists of the time. She paved the way for greater acceptance of women painters. After her death, however, De Morgan fell into obscurity and remains little known today. Her work was preserved by her sister and biographer, the art collector Anna Wilhelmina Stirling (1865-1965), who bought or retained much of it after De Morgan’s death in 1919.
Undated photo of Evelyn De Morgan, photographer unknown. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Childhood
One of four children, Evelyn De Morgan was born Mary Evelyn Pickering in London on August 30, 1855, to upper-class parents. Her father, Percival Pickering, was a lawyer who came from a long line of politicians and landowners in Yorkshire. Her mother, whose maiden name was Anna Maria Wilhelmina Spencer, was a direct descendant of the Earl of Leicester. Typical of children of their station, Evelyn and her younger sister Anna Wilhelmina (known as Wilhelmina) were schooled at home by tutors. At their mother’s insistence, she and Wilhelmina received the same education as their older brothers Spencer and Rowland, taking instruction in Greek, Latin, French, German and Italian. They studied classical literature and mythology as well and were exposed to history books and scientific texts, subjects unavailable to most girls. The four children also received extensive religious education from clergy who visited their home.
Education and Artistic Training
Despite growing up in a family appreciative of art, De Morgan’s mother held conservative views about the role of art in her daughter’s education. According to Wilhelmina, their parents initially discouraged Evelyn from pursuing her artistic ambitions in hopes she would give them up and enter society like other young women of her class. Wilhelmina recalled in a letter how Evelyn would paint secretly in her room after blocking up any holes in the door for fear that the smell of paint would drift into the rest of the house. But by the age of fifteen, she began taking formal instruction with private tutors paid for by her father, who finally came round to supporting her desire to paint professionally. He also allowed De Morgan to accompany her uncle, the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Roddam Spencer Stanhope (1829-1908), to France and Italy to study Old Master paintings to hone her craft. Without her father’s financial support, De Morgan would not have had the means to pursue an artistic career since she was unable by law to manage her own money or property.
In 1872, when she was seventeen, De Morgan enrolled at the South Kensington National Art Training School (now the Royal College of Art). She left after only a few months as she felt stifled by the school’s emphasis on the traditional feminine idea of artisanship rather than the high art of painting. The following year, she became one of the first three women to enter the newly established Slade School of Fine Art at University College in London. Founded by lawyer and art collector Felix Slade (1788-1868), female students were allowed for the first time to study from nude and draped models alongside their male colleagues. She excelled in her courses and won prizes and medals for her life drawings, studies from the antique, paintings, and compositional work, before being awarded the prestigious Slade Scholarship of 50 pounds per annum. It was around this time that De Morgan began using her middle name, the androgynous Evelyn, instead of her given name, Mary, to submit her work to ensure it would be judged on merit and not marked down because she was a woman in a man’s world.
De Morgan remained at Slade until 1875, where she studied under the Neo-classical and Aesthetic painter and designer, Sir Edward Poynter (1836-1919). She also received tutelage from the Symbolist painter and sculptor, George Frederic Watts (1817-1904), a family friend, at his home studio, Little Holland House in Kensington, UK. De Morgan completed her studies in Florence, Italy, with her uncle who introduced her to his Pre-Raphaelite artist friends, among them Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), William Holman Hunt (1827-1910), and the writer Vernon Lee (1856-1935). Florence deepened her admiration for Early and High Renaissance art, especially that of Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), whose work she studied and copied. De Morgan and other Victorian artists were inspired by the Italian Renaissance for its rich colors and attention to detail.
Undated photo of Evelyn and William De Morgan, photographer unknown. De Morgan Foundation, Cannon Hall, Barnsley, UK. Image courtesy of the Delaware Art Museum, Willmington, Delaware.
Early Career and Marriage
De Morgan had her first exhibition in 1876 at the Dudley Gallery (1864-1905) and another a year later at the newly formed avant-garde Grosvenor Gallery in London where she was one of only two women included in the inaugural exhibition.Through the late 1870s and 1880s, De Morgan successfully displayed her work at a variety of galleries.
During her marriage, De Morgan continued her own successful career. She used the profits from sales of her work to help financially support William’s pottery business until 1906, when he found commercial success with the publication of his first novel, Joseph Vance. She also contributed ideas for his ceramic designs. William’s mother, Sophia, a practicing spiritualist medium, encouraged her daughter-in-law to explore spiritualism both in her personal life and art. Spiritualism was a mid-nineteenth century religious movement that focused on the evolution of the spirit during earthly life in preparation for the afterlife and communication with supernatural realms. De Morgan had one-woman shows in London in 1906, and in 1907 at Wolverhampton Municipal Art Gallery and Museum where she presented twenty-five works, many influenced by spiritualism. Together, the couple was politically active, advocating Victorian spiritualism, pacifism in response to the horrific devastation of the First World War, and supporting the early efforts of the women’s suffragist movement. Indeed, De Morgan was a signer of the 1889 Declaration in Favour of Women’s Suffrage while William served as Vice President of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage in 1913.
Artistic Style
De Morgan worked in a variety of styles throughout her career. Early on, she was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, becoming one of only a small number of women artists directly associated with the Brotherhood, and later with the Aestheticism and Symbolist movements. De Morgan’s work often featured powerful women and the female body. She employed spiritual and allegorical themes as well as narratives taken from classical mythology. She relied on symbols such as light and dark, day and night, rainbows, transformation, and bondage to represent the positive triumph of love, hope, and wisdom over egotism, despair, and ignorance.
Selected Works
Aurora Triumphans (Triumphant Aurora), 1877-1878 or ca. 1886
Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919), Aurora Triumphans, 1877-1878 or ca.1886. Oil on canvas, 46 x 68 in. Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth, Dorset, UK. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Aurora Triumphans (1877-1878 or ca. 1886), Latin for Triumphant Aurora, features Aurora, the Roman goddess of Dawn, and Nix, the goddess of Night. At the center of the painting, a trio of red-winged angels in golden tunics herald the new day with trumpets. A garland of pink roses encircles the nude Aurora’s head as she reclines in the lower right corner, an arm modestly covering her breasts. Ropes of roses drape her pubic region and cascade down her legs, one wraps around a shin and another around an ankle, appearing to have shackled her to the rose-strewn ground. She holds the gathered ropes in her hands, as though removing the bonds of night. While Aurora faces the viewer, the dark-haired figure of Nix, whose gauzy drapery picks up the last hues of night in the sky, is depicted facedown, among her swirling veils, her darkness making way for the light of day.
Love’s Passing, 1883-1884
Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919), Love’s Passing, 1883-1884. Oil on canvas, 28 x 45 in. De Morgan Foundation Collection, Cannon Hall, Barnsley, UK. Image courtesy of the Art Renewal Center, Port Reading, New Jersey.
De Morgan painted Love’s Passing (1883-1884) shortly after meeting her future husband but prior to their marriage. The painting is an atmospheric allegory for the passage of time and the human life cycle. In the foreground, two lovers sit on the ground wistfully listening to the music of a tunic–clad, red-winged angel playing a diaulos, an ancient Greek wind instrument made of two pipes (aulos) connected at the base. The woman rests one hand on her lover’s chest and with the other clasps the hand that rests on his knee. Above, in the upper left, a slender crescent moon suggests twilight.
The book on the ground before them lies open to a passage from an elegy by the Roman poet and writer Tibullus (ca. 55 BC – ca. 19 BC), where the writer imagines dying in his lover’s arms, and considers her grief at his funeral. In the background a stooped, gray-haired old woman in a black robe leans heavily on a wooden staff as she is escorted by the hooded figure of the Angel of Death across the River of Life into the afterlife, their silhouettes reflected in the water below. The bridge they cross denotes the border between the world of the living and the dead, youth and old age. Love’s Passing was one of several works De Morgan painted on the theme of love and mortality over the course of her married life. She would not sell the piece and it was kept within the family until her sister Wihelmina’s death in 1965.
Flora, 1894
Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919), Flora, 1894. Oil and gold leaf on canvas, 78 x 35 in. De Morgan Foundation Collection, Cannon Hall, Barnsley, UK. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Flora (1894), considered De Morgan’s “most accomplished painting” for its realism and technical detail by Sarah Hardy, Director of the De Morgan Museum, is one of her best-known works. Completed entirely in Florence, Flora reflects the influence of Botticelli, of whom De Morgan was a great admirer, particularly of his Primavera (ca. 1480) and The Birth of Venus (ca. 1485). De Morgan’s life-size painting depicts Flora, the Roman goddess of spring, amid flowers in a sunny garden with a blue sky overhead. Flora’s golden hair is reminiscent of Botticelli’s Venus in The Birth of Venus while her floral print dress seems inspired by the figure of Flora in Botticelli’s Primavera. The roses in both paintings are the goddess Flora’s attribute symbolizing love and beauty.
Sandro Botticelli (Florence, 1445-1510), Primavera, ca. 1480. Tempera grassa on wood, 81.4 x 125.5 in. Le Galerie Degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Sandro Botticelli (Florence, 1445-1510), The Birth of Venus, ca. 1485. Tempera on canvas, 67.9 x 109.6 in. Le Galerie Degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
De Morgan’s attention to realism extends to the fruit, flowers, and birds allowing them to be easily identified. Flora is shown standing in front of a nescola or loquat tree which bears orange fruit in the spring. Perched on its branches are four small birds, two red-headed goldfinches and two brown and yellow pine siskins. Gold swallows, harbingers of new beginnings, adorn Flora’s bright red sash. Beneath her bare feet a profusion of flowers scattered on the grass includes yellow primroses, blue forget-me-nots, and pink cyclamen, symbolizing the renewal and rebirth brought by spring, as well as more roses. Flora’s cream-colored gown is festooned with flowers native to Florence.
The Storm Spirits, 1900
Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919), The Storm Spirits, 1900. Oil on canvas, 46.2 in. x 67.9 in. De Morgan Foundation Collection, Cannon Hall, Barnsley, UK. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The Storm Spirits (1900), a work created during the Boer War (1899-1902), expresses De Morgan’s pacifism and antiwar stance. Here, she personifies the elements of rain, thunder, and lightning as strong female spirits wreaking havoc upon the sea and rocky landscape below. To the left, dressed in yellow with spiraling drapery and wavy brown hair, is Rain, pouring iridescent gray water from an endless ceramic vial. The rain flows out from under her feet into the frothy, roiling waves beneath her. She is the only spirit without wings. At the center is the black haired and cloaked figure of Thunder in an inky blue robe hovering above the jagged cliffs, her brown wings outstretched across the sky against dark billowing thunder clouds. On the right, Lightning strides forward in a melon robe with large vivid burgundy wings and snaky auburn hair. Yellow bolts of lightning emerge from her right palm while her left hand grasps a jutting rock. She also sports a pair of tiny pink wings on her right foot seen stepping on the rock ledge beneath her. Her left foot is obscured by the misty waves of what appears to be a waterfall. Together, the figures form a triangular composition in the stormy foreground, but a tranquil island in the center of a calm sea can be seen in the distance on the horizon. The artwork can be read as a symbolic depiction of the chaos of war and hope for a return to peace.
The Vision, 1914
Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919), The Vision, 1914. Oil on canvas, 24 x 31 in. Private collection. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The Vision (1914) is one of several allegorical paintings De Morgan created in response to the carnage and futility of the First World War. It was included in a 1916 exhibition held at De Morgan’s studio in the Chelsea neighborhood of West London and was among thirteen paintings sold for the benefit of the British Red Cross along with S.O.S. (1914-1916), The Search Light (1916), and The Red Cross (1918).
In The Vision, a brown-haired maiden in a blue robe personifies Purity wearing a golden headband decorated with grapes and leaves. She clasps several shafts of grain and gazes directly from the canvas. Purity is accompanied by the figure of Peace in a rose-printed red robe with a wreath of olive leaves in her windswept auburn hair. A dark, malevolent figure peers from behind the worried women. He is a bat-winged spirit with flames for hair representing the devastation of war. In the background, a dawning sun casts brilliant rays across the ocean, suggesting hope as it parts the clouds.
S.O.S., 1914-1916
Evelyn De Morgan (1855-1919), S.O.S., 1914-1916. Oil on canvas, 367.7 x 257.8 x 23.2 in. De Morgan Foundation Collection, Cannon Hall, Barnsley, UK. Image courtesy of the De Morgan Foundation.
Painted in the midst of World War I, S.O.S (1914-1916) takes its name from the Morse code signal for help–Save Our Souls. The canvas explores the conflict between good and evil. A white-robed woman stands barefoot upon a rock in the sea. Eyes closed, her head thrown back, face tilted toward the heavens, she spreads her arms wide, palms up, as if seeking deliverance from above. She symbolizes the innocence of the victims of war and England’s hope for peace. Hideous creatures threaten in the roiling water at her feet. De Morgan used dragons and sea monsters to reference evil and death. Here, they represent the agents of war, ready to inflict physical and mental anguish. A concentric rainbow, symbolic of the afterlife, pierces the starry sky above, offering hope and salvation.
The Gilded Cage, 1919
The Gilded Cage (1919) was De Morgan’s final work before her death and a commentary on women’s place in society. Inside a sumptuous room, a young woman draws back a curtain to look out at a group of dancers and musicians. Plum purple roses adorn the windowsill. Her lavish gold dress, bracelets, and ring indicate affluence. Yet, broken jewelry and an open book lay discarded on the floor by the woman’s feet, presumably rejected gifts from the older man who sits nearby at a writing desk, staring morosely into space. The inscriptions on the spines of the books on the shelf above the desk are in Italian. They read: “Poesia,” “Musica,” "Arte,” “Mors,” "Tratta-to-della,” and “Medicin” (poetry, music, art, death, interpretations and medicine). The woman stares wistfully, one hand reaching out in yearning as she watches the festivities. Another woman is the central figure among the dancers outside. She wears a ragged blue gown and holds a baby, signifying motherhood and maternal duty. Above the revelers, a bird soars free, in contrast to a canary held captive in a cage within the room. Both the canary and the woman at the window can be said to each reside in gilded cages.
Later Life
Even after her husband William attained his own success, De Morgan continued to achieve independently and had loyal patrons. Many of the works she painted from 1899 onward reflect her horror of war, particularly the Boer and World Wars. Many other artworks reference women's suffrage. Around 1909, De Morgan stopped exhibiting regularly. She disdained modern art, commenting after seeing a 1910 exhibition of Post-Impressionist works, “If that is what people like now, I shall wait till the turn of the tide.” Nevertheless, in 1916, she hosted a successful benefit at her studio in Edith Grove, London, in support of the British Red Cross and the Italian Croce Rossa.
Undated portrait of Anna Wilhelmina Stirling at her home, Old Battersea House, Battersea, UK. Photographer unknown. Image courtesy of the De Morgan Foundation Collection.
Death and the De Morgan Foundation
Evelyn De Morgan died on May 2, 1919, of heart failure at the age of sixty-three, two years after her beloved William. She was buried beside him in Brookwood Cemetery, near Woking, Surrey. The inscription on their joint tombstone taken from their co-authored book, The Result of an Experiment, reads, “Sorrow is only of the flesh/The life of the spirit is joy.” After her passing, De Morgan’s remaining paintings were sold to benefit St. Dunstan’s Charity for the Blind in London (now known as Blind Veterans UK). Her sister, Anna Wilhelmina Stirling, purchased a great number of these which became the basis for the De Morgan Foundation Collection. Upon her own death in 1965, Wilhelmina bequeathed the collection to be held in trust for public enjoyment. The De Morgan Foundation is the world’s largest, most comprehensive collection of artworks by Evelyn and William De Morgan dedicated to promoting and protecting the legacy and reputation of both artists. The De Morgan Foundation Collection houses fifty-six of Evelyn’s oil paintings and over eight hundred of her drawings, alongside pottery by William, considered one of the foremost ceramicists of the Arts and Crafts movement. Through the De Morgan Foundation’s efforts, Evelyn De Morgan’s work continues to be exhibited across the UK and the United States to this day.
Collections and Exhibition History
Besides the De Morgan Foundation, De Morgan’s works are held in numerous public and private institutions including the permanent collections of the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, the Walker Art Gallery, the National Trust properties Wightwick Manor and Knightshayes Court, the National Portrait Gallery, the Watts Gallery, the Southwark Art Collection and the Columbia Museum of Art in South Carolina. Her work was most recently shown in the exhibition “Evelyn De Morgan: The Gold Drawings” (March 11-August 27, 2023) at Leighton House Museum in London.
To learn more about Evelyn De Morgan and her art, visit the De Morgan Foundation website here.
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