Painter.

30 August 1855 – 2 May 1919

Evelyn De Morgan in Bloomsbury: A tribute by Sarah Hardy

Evelyn De Morgan (née Pickering) was one of the most exciting artists of the late-19^th and early-20^th centuries. De Morgan’s juvenile poetry, written between the ages of 13 and 15 expressed her socialist, spiritualist and feminist values which would become key themes in her later paintings.

A key figure in the classical revival, Symbolist and Aesthetic art movements, she always focused on female histories and experiences to subvert the male-dominated artworld. Her work was of such renown that she was invited to exhibit in the Grosvenor Gallery, New Gallery and Wolverhampton Art Gallery where she sold paintings to notable patrons. Charity was always at the centre of her moral code. Three years before her death in 1919, she created an exhibition of her pacifist paintings to raise funds for the Red Cross.

Evelyn Pickering was born and raised in London and had early ambitions to be an artist. As a child, she had benefitted from a thorough, well-rounded education and had a comprehensive understanding of classics. This aspirational teenager had a string of art tutors employed by her father and she progressed to the National Art Training School (now the Royal College of Art) in 1871 to develop her practice.  Her 1872 diary reveals the anxieties of a young woman determined to succeed; in most of the entries she berates herself for wasting time or not undertaking enough work. However, this journal is also the key to understanding the sources of her inspiration in her formative years as an artist. On August 15 1872, chaperoned by a Mrs Cheeseman, she visited the British Museum in the heart of Bloomsbury. It seems that the Parthenon Frieze was of particular importance to De Morgan, who would directly copy the drapery from these Greek sculptures in her own painting which takes the classical sculpted stone representation of the female form, as an inspiration for her own art.

Ariadne in Naxos (1877) is one of her earliest surviving paintings. It features a young woman isolated on a beach and, whilst the style is within the Aesthetic Movement, a school whose philosophy was to promote art devoid of meaning, the title challenges this rule. According to mythology, Ariadne was instrumental in helping Theseus defeat the Minotaur but he abandoned her soon after for another woman. De Morgan paints Ariadne alone, dejected and ignored. Far from having no meaning this image critiques women’s place in patriarchal society. Ariadne’s pose and drapery has been drawn directly from the three female figures from the right side of the east pediment of the Parthenon (c. 437-432 BCE. British Museum, London). It might be suggested that her use of the classical to express a late 19th century vision of women is a radical subversion of the status quo.

De Morgan lived at 6 Upper Grosvenor Street which was a short walk from the British Museum. This suggests that she probably visited the Museum often to make preparatory drawings for her paintings.

From 1873, De Morgan spent an increasing amount of time in Bloomsbury, through her admission to the Slade School of Art at the University of London. The Slade embraced progressive views, particularly in its emphasis on drawing from life and its equal admission of women to the school. Under the will of Felix Slade, the School’s founder, six scholarships paying £50 per annum were available to exemplarily students. De Morgan won one of these prestigious awards in 1874. A copy of the 1873-4 prospectus is extant in the UCL archive. [1] It reveals the level of knowledge needed to receive the scholarship. This included being examined on English Language, English, Greek and Roman History, Ancient and Modern Geography, elementary Arithmetic and one foreign language or one book of Euclid. In addition to the scholarship, De Morgan won a number of Slade Prizes including a silver medal in drawing from the antique cast, endorsing her talent. It was around this time that De Morgan began using her middle name, the unisex ‘Evelyn’ over her Christian name ‘Mary’. This was to have her work judged on merit and not marked down because she was a woman.

The Slade School also encouraged its art students to attend lectures given by professors in other schools at the university. De Morgan attended anatomy classes and live dissections which greatly improved her ability to render the human form with accuracy. Her painting Cadmus and Harmonia (1877) exemplifies this skill. According to Ovid’s Metamorphosis, a classic text which describes the history of the world as a series of transformations, Cadmus disobeyed the gods and was turned into a serpent. Harmonia, his lover, begged to be reunited with him through a similar serpentine transformation. De Morgan depicts the moment before Harmonia is transformed. Through her expert technique she makes flesh from paint by overlaying cool blue and fresh pink in translucent layers. As a result of her understanding of the human form, the flesh she renders has palpable realism, as though stretched over muscle and bone. It is a remarkable painting.

Symbolism was born in Paris in the 1860s, spearheaded by artists who sought to create visual equivalents to the literary symbolism found in the poems of Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Rimbaud. This artistic style spread to London and Bloomsbury’s literary scene, with figures like Oscar Wilde and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (both known to Sir Edward Poynter, Evelyn’s tutor at the Slade) soon engaged with Symbolist ideals in their writings and artistic endeavours. Artists, writers, and intellectuals in this period influenced and supported each other’s creative endeavours, leading to the cross-fertilisation of ideas and artistic approaches, including the incorporation of Symbolist elements into their work. During her time in Bloomsbury, De Morgan benefited from intellectual exchange and camaraderie among fellow artists and intellectuals. This environment encouraged the development of her unique artistic voice and allowed for the cross-fertilisation of ideas, including the incorporation of Symbolist elements into her imagery.  Attending the Slade School of Art, in the epicentre of this artistic melting pot had a huge influence on De Morgan’s own art, exemplified by Luna (1885). The artwork portrays the goddess Selene (Luna in Roman mythology) reclining in the ethereal crescent moon.

De Morgan was fascinated by spirituality and the subconscious. This is seen in her mystical aura of Luna where the moon hangs over a vast ocean and conveys a sense of otherworldly beauty and divine transcendence. Moreover, Luna bears the influence of Bloomsbury’s progressive values: the rejection of materialism and industrialisation. Here De Morgan’s portrayal of the goddess in a waning moon can be interpreted as symbolising the renewal and cycles of nature, carrying underlying themes of hope and harmony amidst the tumultuous social and political movements.

Today, the majority of De Morgan’s paintings, are under the care of the De Morgan Foundation, established by her sister, Wilhelmina Stirling in 1967. The Foundation’s museum at Cannon Hall in Barnsley and its touring exhibitions across the country continue to preserve and showcase Evelyn De Morgan’s extraordinary artistic legacy.

Sarah Hardy, Director of the De Morgan Museum and Victorian Arts & Crafts specialist:  https://www.demorgan.org.uk/discover/the-foundation/who-we-are/

[1] University College, London. Calendar 1873-4 (London: Taylor and Francis, 1873) p. 46