The Angelic Art of Evelyn de Morgan

November 12th, 2017

Awake Goy

Evelyn de Morgan was a very talented artist who started out painting Classical pieces, but was soon influenced by the pre-Raphaelites. As she progressed, her work would incorporate spiritualist, pro-female, and anti-war themes, along with other Victorian concepts.

Excerpts from the De Morgan Foundation:

On her seventeenth birthday, August 30th 1872, Evelyn De Morgan wrote in her diary: “At the beginning of each year I say ‘I will do something’ and at the end I have done nothing. Art is eternal, but life is short”.

De Morgan was a successful and prolific artist, exhibiting a range of her works from 1877 until her death in 1919. Her style is distinctive in its rich use of colour, allegory and the dominance of the female form. Her favourite model, Jane Hales, was once her sister’s nursemaid. She is the prototype for most of Evelyn’s women. These contrast noticeably with the women painted by male Pre-Raphaelite artists, such as those by Edward Burne-Jones, who seem to be ephemeral, dreamlike constructions in danger of wilting away. Instead, Evelyn De Morgan presents strong, athletic women, who are beautiful but robust. […]

De Morgan’s use of colour is very distinctive and is used to represent psychological and esoteric states. Rainbow iridescent shades appear in many of her works; the rainbow was considered in mythology to form a bridge for the soul after death and this is in keeping with her spiritualism.