A Renaissance Angel

Evelyn de Morgan 1855 - 1919, was an English painter. She was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement. She was born Mary Evelyn Pickering in London into a wealthy family her father was a QC and her mother was the daughter of 1st Earl of Leicester, her private education consisted of Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian. classical Literature and mythology, along with scientific and history studies, hence the development of the pre Raphaelite art in her works. Evelyn de Morgan studied art at the Royal Academy and the Slade School of art, eventually leaving to concentrate on her own work. She was well known to the fellow artists George Frederick Watts, William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, along with a number of following painters, her works were described as being Spiritualist in theme and somewhat mystical in their content. There is a huge amount of biographical detail surrounding her life and career and to further this very brief monogram of her biography would certainly be an injustice to one of the most popular painters of the 19th Century. This picture is signed with the monogram of Mary Evelyn Pickering before her marriage to William de Morgan in 1887. I have included another brief biography of Evelyn de Morgan for your interest. Evelyn De Morgan (born Mary Evelyn Pickering; 30 August 1855 – 2 May 1919) was a prominent English painter of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, widely recognised for her contributions to the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, Symbolism, and Aestheticism. Early Life and Radical Education Born into an affluent, upper-middle-class family in London, Pickering was the daughter of Percival Pickering QC and Anna Maria Wilhelmina Spencer Stanhope. Despite her family’s initial discouragement of a professional art career, she received an unusually thorough classical education at home, studying Latin, Greek, and mythology—subjects that would later provide the foundational iconography for her work. In 1873, she became one of the first generation of women to enroll at the revolutionary Slade School of Fine Art. Under the tutelage of Sir Edward Poynter, she was permitted to study from the nude life model, a practice typically denied to women at the time. During this period, she adopted the unisex name "Evelyn" to ensure her work was judged on merit rather than gender. Her style was significantly shaped by her uncle, the artist John Roddam Spencer-Stanhope, and her frequent travels to Italy, where she developed a lifelong fascination with Renaissance masters, particularly Sandro Botticelli. Her work is primarily figural, utilizing mythological and allegorical themes to explore spiritual and moral concepts. She first exhibited at the Dudley Gallery in 1876 and was one of only two women invited to showcase work at the prestigious, avant-garde Grosvenor Gallery in 1877. De Morgan was a staunch feminist and pacifist. She signed the Declaration in Favour of Women's Suffrage in 1889 and boycotted the Royal Academy. Her later works, such as S.O.S. (1914), reflected her horror of war and were often sold to benefit the Red Cross. In 1887, she married the celebrated ceramicist William De Morgan. The couple shared a deep interest in Spiritualism, which became a dominant motive in her later art, often portraying the human soul as being imprisoned within the physical body. After William’s pottery business faced financial trouble, Evelyn’s professional success helped support their household, later allowing William to pursue a career as a successful novelist. She died in 1919 and is buried at Brookwood Cemetery. Today, much of her legacy is preserved by the De Morgan Foundation, which maintains a significant collection of her oil paintings and preparatory drawings.