Yet another excellent article by Walter Shaw Sparrow, this time about Evelyn De Morgan, a seriously underrated painter. The quality of the article makes comment by me largely unnecessary. Right at the end of the piece it came as something of a surprise to discover that the lady was a sculptress as well as a painter. I will be adding illustrations from this article in the near future.

PHR 8/10/2003.

The maiden name of Mrs William De Morgan was Evelyn Pickering, and twenty three years have passed since that name appeared for the first time in the catalogue of an important exhibition of pictures. A painting in oil was hung then in (1877) at the Grosvenor Gallery; it had for its subject Ariadne in Naxos; it was close in drawing, thoughtful and precise in composition; and its style, its general character, was Pre-Raphaelite, but not as yet in what mat be called a Victorian manner. Its painter, that is to say, was not in 1877 a devoted follower of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Miss Pickering, indeed-the maiden name seems the right one to employ when speaking of the artist’s early work-had in those days barely scraped an acquaintance with the most noted men of genius who had been influenced by the modern Pre-Raphaelite movement. She had not seen the pictures that Millais painted in his first period, nor had she had a chance of becoming familiar with them till they were brought once more to public notice by the Millais Exhbition of 1886. With Rossetti’s poetry, in 1877, Miss Pickering was well acquainted, but of his genius in painting she knew scarcely anything at all, and it remained almost unknown to her till she visited that fine show of Rossetti’s pictures which was held after his death. As regards Burne-Jones, she certainly had seen a few of his paintings, and had certainly been moved by their peculiar greatness; but the influence of Burne-Jones had not then appeared in her work And became what it was soon to be-a determinant factor in the formation of her settled character as an artist. The short of the matter is that Miss Pickering’s style had come to her at first hand, a natural expression of her spiritual nature. She understood the great predecessors of Raphael; she and they were congenial: “across the great gulf of time they exchanged smiles and a salute.” Even as a child she made friends with those who were represented in the National Gallery; it was from their pictures that her inborn love of art received its earliest encouragement.

Other aesthetic influences came soon afterwards, the first of these being the wise sympathy and the rich suggestive art of her uncle, Mr Roddam Spencer Stanhope. Then followed a course of academic study. It began at the Slade School, when Miss Pickering was sixteen; and it ended eighteen months late, when she won the Slade Scholarship, a valuable prize given for a term of three years. Though valuable, this scholarship had attached to it certain conditions which Miss Pickering found irksome, so she boldly threw it up at the end of the first year, and started to paint pictures on her own account. This happened in 1887, a few months before Ariadne in Naxos was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery.

About the same time Mr Stanhope went to live in Italy, and year by year his niece passes several months with him, so that she was able to study her favourite Italian masters in their own home, amid surroundings friendly both to them and to a right appreciation of their naïve and serene merits. In England, the sentiment of a primitive painter is very rarely understood, so at variance is it with the habits of mind engendered by the grim warfare of life in huge commercial districts and cities. This helps to explain why our English Pre-Raphaelites have always had so many opponents, even amongst artists and those who profess to be art lovers. And one remembers, also, that their German forerunners-Overbeck, Cornelius, and their disciples-were not more fortunate; in youth they had nothing in common with that public spirited enthusiasm which appeared in Germany after the fall of Napoleon; and it is worth noting that even Goethe, usually a most generous-mined critic, had no patience with them and their sincere reverence for the devotional art of the early Italians. Indeed he told Eckermann that a revival of old styles in art ought to be looked on as “a sort of masquerade, which can, in the long run, do no good, but must, on the contrary, have a bad effect on the man who adopts it. Such a thing” said he, “is in contradiction to the age in which we live, and will confirm the empty and shallow way of thinking in which it originated. It is well enough, on a merry winter’s evening, to go to a masquerade as a Turk; but what should we think of a man who wore such a mask all the year round? We should think that he is crazy, or in a fair way to become so before long,”

This is one manner of viewing a revival of old styles in art; but is it really a comprehensive manner? One may venture to think not, and for the following reason. No great primitive phase of art seems archaic to those who are never tired of living with it in congenial surroundings, such as may be found in some old Flemish and Italian cities; cities where the present seems actually to sleep in the past, so soon are its modes of thought forgotten by anyone who, penetrated with the genius loci, has imagination enough to become a spiritual contemporary of the early Old Master whose work he loves best to contemplate. To such a student-call him a visionary if you like-the early Italian and Flemish painters are not antiquated, out of date. They are as familiar to him as Homer is to many ardent devotees. This is a fact worth remembering, for an intelligent recognition of its importance in art-criticism would prevent a great deal of idle talk about the alleged affectation of the Victorian Pre-Raphaelites. To-day in this article it is a fact which must not be forgotten even for a moment, as the work of Mrs De Morgan is nothing if not the inevitable outcome of the intuitive fondness she has ever had for modes of aesthetic expression which still seem to most people primitive.

As we have already seen the earliest of her art influences were found in the National Gallery, where the natural bias of her mind in childhood brought her into sympathy with the Italians; we have seen too, how this sympathy was encouraged and deepened by frequent visits to Italy; and mention has been made of the artist’s admiration for Burne-Jones. It is enthusiasm rather than admiration, and its effect on Mrs de Morgan’s technical equipment is easily noted in many pictures and studies. One feels, too, on very rare occasions, that it has touched the inner essence and life of a piece of work, leaving a trace of unpleasing wistfulness, of spiritual languor; but this has happened very rarely, and the fact is mentioned here only because that languor is the negation of all the human cheerfulness and vigour of spirit that make life liveable and civilisation progressive. This is how it appeals to me, and one must needs avoid that suppression of adverse criticism which turns a writer into a mere “flatterer, a beast that biteth smiling.”

At the same time, however, I am well aware that what is truthful criticism to one man is of necessity more or less false to everyone else, since no two persons see exactly the same forms and colours, or possess, in equal measure a capacity for taking delight in the same kind of aestheticism. It is certain, then, that this attempt to estimate the work of Mrs De Morgan will meet some opposition everywhere. Many persons, I have no doubt, will prefer those pictures in the technique of which the influence of Burne-Jones happens to be most clearly evident, while others will find most pleasure when they feel the presence of Botticelli’s spirit, as in the quietly beautiful picture entitled Flora.

Flora is a “small life” figure. She is dressed in a white robe, dappled with many-tinted pansies, and the drapery is painted over gold-leaf, which shines through the colour. The scarf is scarlet, with a pattern of swallows in gold. The tree in the background, with its admirably drawn foliage, so decorative in effect, is a Nespolo tree, that bear fruit in the early spring. The picture was painted entirely in Florence, where Mrs De Morgan works during the winter, and none will fail to notice how lovingly and thoughtfully it is finished in every part.

Mrs De Morgan’s debt to Botticelli may also be felt in the illustration found on page 229-not in the triple-winged Ithuriel, but in the exquisite little figure of Eve, who sleeps, dreaming in the midst of the scattered marguerites, forget-me-nots, and roses. This picture was inspired by the following lines from the Fourth Book of the “Paradise Lost,” where Gabriel says:

“Ithuriel and Zephon, with winged speed

Search through this garden, leave unsearched no nook,

But chiefly where those two fair creatures lodge,

Now perhaps asleep, secure of harm.

This evening from the sun’s decline arrived

Who tells of some infernal Spirit seen

Hitherward bent(who should have thought?), escaped

The bars of Hell, on errand bad, no doubt;

Such where ye find, seize fast and hither bring.

So saying, on he who had his radiant files,

Dazzling the moon; these to the bower direct

In search of whom they sought. Him they found,

Squat like a toad, close to the ear of Eve,

Assaying, by his devilish art, to reach

The organs of her fancy……”

Ithuriel, as represented by Mrs De Morgan, has just found Eve and the tempter. He is accompanied by Cherubs, whose threefold azure wings are as blue cloud surrounding him. He wears a soft raiment, bright with mother-of-pearl tones, the draperies around the waist and body are rose-coloured, and so are the sleeves. The three pairs of wings, very well poised and admirably handled, are crimson-hued with touches of grey green here and there. Ithuriel has light hair, is pale-faced, and the well drawn hands are as delicate as they could be. It mat be thought that this Ithuriel is too mild-too much like Shakespeare’s Oberon-to be in keeping with the terrific tragedy depicted in the first four books of the “Paradise Lost.” Eve too, lovely as she is, seems to bear no likelihood of resemblance to Milton’s superb mother of mankind. But the picture has a sweet serene grace which should make us glad to accept from Mrs De Morgan another Eve, and another Ithuriel, true children of her own fancy.

Nor is this all. An artist, when inspired by a great poem, ought always to give his or her interpretation of the spirit of the text, however opposed it might be to the one commonly supposed to be right. This is a wise and necessary thing to do, not only because artists should avoid all moods for which they have no gift, but also because painting and poetry are so different, in many ways, that it is well-nigh impossible to make real on canvas those subtle characteristics which give to a great poem its peculiar distinction. For example every line of “Paradise Lost” has a rare sense of manliness, while a sense of illimitable vastness reigns through the whole poem; but who, labouring within the four sides of a canvas, could do justice to these things? Why the very act of trying to draw one of Milton’s angels is in absolute antagonism to the Miltonic method of description, for Milton impresses us by leaving his supernatural creations indistinctly shadowed forth, so that the imagination may be stirred by a vague idea of such a presence as should excite awe, wonder, or amazement. A painter, on the other hand, cannot thus escape from the limitations imposed on his means of description by definite outlines and exact details. Hence, no doubt, when thinking seriously of Milton’s angels, fallen or other, he must come to one of two conclusions; he may regard them as being above and beyond the sphere of pictorial representation, or else believe-certainly with perfect justice-that he has a right to translate into the language of his own form of aesthetics the inspiration he has received from Milton’s “dim intimations” of glorious or tremendous beings. That is what Mrs De Morgan has done, and art and we gain a great deal. Milton, too, did something akin to it, for he did not transform the traditional poetry which had grown about the story of Adam’s disobedience, and the loss of Paradise.

Another phase of Mrs De Morgan’s art may be studied in the illustration reproduced on this page. Here the subject is taken from the mythological story of Boreas, the wind from the N.N.E., and Orithyia, daughter of Erechtheus, King of Athens. Mrs De Morgan has represented Boreas in the act of flying with Orithyia towards Thrace, where they begot the Boreades, Calais, Zetes, and Cleopatra. The myth seems to exemplify the soul of good in things sometimes evil, Orithyia personifying that eternal fruitfulness of Nature, the corn and the flower seeds of which are so often sown in waste places by the most boisterous of destructive winds. But, however this may be, the picture has a fine significance of its own. It has faults, no doubt. The modelling is somewhat “tight,” and there is also a want of proportion between the torso and legs of Boreas. On the other hand, when viewed as a whole, the picture is noteworthy for the excellence of its decorative conception and treatment.

In “Earthbound” where the artist tells what she thinks of the world’s engrossing pursuit of wealth, there are merits of a quite different kind, often described as art-literary. The story told runs as follows : in a desolate country an aged king sits brooding over his hoard of gold, while the dark Angel of Death approaches, a cloud-like mantle floating around her. It is strewn with stars, and a moon shines dimly on the angel’s dusky wing, all typical of the elements into which the earthbound miser will soon be resolved. Away in the distance a freed spirit rises into the sky. Allegorical pictures of this kind give to Mrs De Morgan’s art a certain resemblance to that of Mr G F Watts; and I do not feel called upon to break a lance with those who object to allegories in painting. They are free to think as they please, but their criticisms are certainly futile, inasmuch as all true artists do as they must, not as they will.

To this fact Milton draws attention in his great essay on “The Reason of Church-Government against Prelaty.” Here, rising suddenly into verse, he says “But when God commands to take the trumpet, and blow a dolorous or jarring blast, it lies not in man’s will what he shall say, or what he shall conceal.” This view of genuine inspiration applies to all forms of imaginative expression, and hence one is glad to accept in pictures all allegories which are deeply felt, as is the case with all those which Mrs De Morgan has painted.

It must not be thought, however, that the foregoing pictures, varied as they are in style, give the full scope of Mrs De Morgan’s work as an artist. She has produced many black and white studies so excellent that they could not well be bettered, and she has recalled to our minds the fact that gently imaginative painters often develop unexpected strength when they turn for recreation to sculpture, and enjoy the realistic exercise of modelling in clay. To this exercise we owe the great contrast which exists between Leighton’s dreamlike paintings and his masterful, virile Athlete; and a similar contrast will be found when you turn from Mrs De Morgan’s Ithuriel to her Medusa, an impressive bust in bronze, as largely handled as it is strong and noble in conception. And the other piece of sculpture the Mater Dolorosa, though naturally conceived in a milder spirit, is no less remarkable for the uncommon beauty of its type and the reticent character of its fine pathos.

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