EVELYN DE MORGAN
exhibition reviewed by Jeannie Trueman
Paintings by Evelyn De Morgan are being shown at the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, London, until 20th April 1997. The Gallery is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 5pm. All of these paintings belong to the De Morgan Foundation.
Evelyn Pickering awoke on her seventeenth birthday thinking she had wasted her life. " Art is eternal, but life is short..." she told her diary. "I will make up for it now, I have not a moment to lose."
As a result of this most sober thinking, she made it her ambition to pursue 'eternal art', and subsequently became one of the first female students to enter the Slade School of Art.
In 1875, at the age of twenty, she had sold her first work, Tobias and the Angel, and within a year began public exhibitions of her art. The critics, however, were very dismissive of it -- probably because she was female.
Evelyn's uncle was John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, an artist who was very fond of the pre-Raphaelite style. She stayed with him in Florence, where she admired Botticelli's work. That, together with her formal training, influenced her style, which was classical and mythological.
In 1887 Evelyn Pickering married the influential designer William De Morgan. They supported each other in their artistic endeavours, both being associated with the pre-Raphaelite and the Arts & Crafts movements. William's speciality was ceramics, and he was able to apply that experience to facilitate Evelyn's experimentation with different paint techniques.
The paintings in the collection are, in my opinion, very well-painted, beautiful, and fascinating. The skin tones and folds of the clothing have been painted with great skill, characteristic of the days before colour photography made such detail (arguably) unneccessary. They make a refreshing change from modern art. Several of the paintings have subjects drawn from Greek mythology, depicting gods and goddesses in flowing robes, in victories and defeats.
Evelyn took great interest in spiritual matters; this is reflected in her paintings. Many of the pictures show well-dressed, rich, powerful people nonetheless looking bored, sad and despairing, even when in gardens surrounded by beautiful flowers.
Her pictures include :
The worship of Mammon
A woman clutches at the knees of a giant figure of Mammon, who in the Bible stands for wealth and excessive material possessions. He is withholding from her a bag of gold. This is intended to symbolise the loss of one's soul in exchange for receiving power, wealth, or other personal dreams.Earthbound
The painting depicts a king absorbed in counting gold, while Oblivion comes to enshroud him in eternal night. But the King is obsessed with counting money.... he is being shrouded with folds of dark cloth. In the background, a figure in white robes soars towards heaven.The Hour-Glass
A woman sits, looking disappointed, watching an hourglass.... time slipping away, on the floor a faded rose -- that is how she sees herself. But outside the door is light and blossoms, and an angel announcing Eternal Life. On the floor is a book with an inscription in Latin, which in English says 'Death is the portal of Life'.The Gilded Cage
The man looks sorrowful, his young wife having rejected his gift of jewels and thrown them to the floor. She looks longingly at the dancing gypsies, wishing she could join them. The bird indoors is in a gilded cage, whilst the bird outside flies free....The uselessness of material wealth is a recurrent theme in Evelyn's work. Those who have sought it above all else are depicted as those who will, in the end, suffer. Yet the pictures also show hope, beauty and salvation, for those who would seek it.
The First World War was a source of sadness to Evelyn. Like many painters and poets of the time, she sought to capture it in a way that showed its horror, a grief shared by God and Man -- but she also portrayed hope; hope that character would be strengthened, and hope of reconciliation.
Death of the Dragon (1914)
An angel dressed in white rises above a crowd of praying figures who have been freed from the grasp of dragons.The Red Cross (1916)
Christ rises from the cross with nailmarks, crown of thorns and blood-red robes. Angels with rainbows emanating from their wings gather round him; all above a dark graveyard of wooden crosses.In addition to their artistic merit, the pictures are a reminder to us that the worship of wealth should not be our first priority -- when we idly contemplate what we would do with a lottery win, we are well-advised to reflect on the verse* accompanying the painting Earthbound :
* Unattributed poem quoted in the catalogue of the De Morgan Collection, Old Battersea House, c.1920 *Who clutches at a heap of gold,
Still clutches what he may not hold,
The soul that knows no second birth,
Shall wane fast held by Mother Earth,
Grim twins await his latest breath,
Oblivion, hand in hand with Death,
He smiles, the capture of his prize,
Nor even knows that others rise.
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