Evelyn De Morgan
A Symbolist following in the Pre-Raphaelites' footsteps.
Evelyn De Morgan studied at the Slade School and painted allegorical pictures of light and darkness, spirituality and women's emancipation, influenced by Burne-Jones and the Italian Renaissance. She was married to the ceramicist William De Morgan.
Evelyn De Morgan was born Mary Evelyn Pickering in London in 1855 into a well-to-do family. Her uncle, the painter John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, who was close to the Pre-Raphaelites, encouraged her interest in art. Her parents were hesitant about letting her become an artist, but she was determined. In 1873 she enrolled at the newly opened Slade School of Fine Art in London, which admitted women on the same terms as men, and won a scholarship there.
She often travelled to Italy and visited her uncle in Florence, where she studied the Renaissance masters, especially Botticelli. In 1877 she exhibited at the opening of the Grosvenor Gallery in London, a gallery for newer art, and her paintings were well received. Among her well-known works are Night and Sleep of 1878, Medea of 1889, in the Williamson Art Gallery in Birkenhead, and Flora of 1894.
Her painting combines Pre-Raphaelite richness of detail with Burne-Jones's elongated figures and the clear compositions of the Renaissance. She painted in strong, pure colours and liked to use gold. Her subjects are allegorical and often concern the soul's struggle between light and darkness, materialism and spirituality, captivity and liberation. During the First World War she made several pictures about the horrors of war.
In 1887 she married the ceramicist William De Morgan. The couple were very close, and she sold her paintings to keep his workshop afloat. Both were interested in spiritualism and in 1909 published a book of texts they said had been received through automatic writing. She supported women's suffrage and signed a declaration for the cause in 1889.
Evelyn De Morgan died in 1919. Her sister, Wilhelmina Stirling, collected the couple's work, and the De Morgan Foundation now looks after the collection and shows it at various venues in England. After long neglect she has in recent years attracted fresh interest as one of the most original women artists in the late Pre-Raphaelite tradition.