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Blindness and Cupidity Chasing Joy from the City
Artist: De Morgan, Evelyn
Here Cupidity, hoarding his jewels carefully in his cloak, and wearing a golden crown, is shackled to Blindness by chains and spikes. They are driving out the angel of joy from the city. The scroll on the right reads:
Hunted Joy flies through the gate.
Blind Blindness is left desolate.
Cupidity the…
Cadmus and Harmonia
Artist: De Morgan, Evelyn
The subject of the painting is from Ovids Metamorphoses (Book IV, 563-603). After Cadmus is changed into a serpent by Mars, his wife Harmonia begs for a similar fate, which is granted. Here we see Harmonia in the embrace of her transfigured husband. However, De Morgan deviates from Metamorphoses by…
Flora
Artist: De Morgan, Evelyn
Flora is the Roman Goddess of flowers, especially associated with spring, her festivals, the Floralia, were from 28 April to 3 May. The scroll is in Italian and translates as follows:
I come down from Florence and am Flora,
This city takes its name from flower
Among the flowers I was born and now…
The Garden of Opportunity
Artist: De Morgan, Evelyn
In the Garden of Opportunity, we see on the right symbols of learning and wisdom. The bench is decorated with an owl, the wise bird and with the cornucopia of the wealth of the earth. A book lies discarded on the bench. Behind is a church, the medieval seat of learning. The mill and water wheel behi…
The Barred Gate
Artist: De Morgan, Evelyn
This painting is one of the last Evelyn painted and remains unfinished. It portrays a King with his purse of money, climbing the rocky steps to heaven and being halted by the barred gate. The moral being, to give up the pursuit of wealth and fortune in order to obtain higher happiness….
Night and Sleep
Artist: De Morgan, Evelyn
Night floats through the evening sky, his red robes reminiscent of the sunset, and his billowing cloak darkening the sky behind him. He floats arm in arm with Sleep, who gently scatters poppies onto the earth beneath, from the armful of flowers that he has taken from his girdle. (The Victorians used…
The Captives
Artist: De Morgan, Evelyn
In a dark cave, festooned with phallic stalactites and stalagmites, cluster together several classically draped women. They are being menaced in their prison by shadowy dragons, from whose sight three of the women are hiding their eyes. There appears to be no escape. This could be seen as a metaphor…
Our Lady of Peace
Artist: De Morgan, Evelyn
This painting is in response to the Boer war.
In Our Lady of Peace we see a Christian knight, who is about to depart for battle, kneel in a church, and pray to the Blessed Virgin Mary (Our Lady of Peace). De Morgans use of traditional Christian iconography and chivalric imagery is however, subver…
The Love Potion
Artist: De Morgan, Evelyn
Evelyn De Morgan painted several subjects using medieval themes and stylistic devices which had been made popular by the Pre-Raphaelites, these paintings included Queen Eleanor and the Fair Rosamund and The Hour Glass.
The female figure in the painting has often been mis-categorised as the devi…
Sunbeam and Summer Shower
Artist: De Morgan, Evelyn
Oil sketch for an uncompleted larger painting.
The sunbeam, in the person of a young woman draped in gold, sits on a rock, shrinking away from the oncoming shower. Above her, the sky is blue and clear. From the left approaches the Summer Shower, a woman draped in dark blue and pink, casting a shado…
