BY EVELYN DE MORGAN NÉE PICKERING (1855-1919), 1873

The eldest daughter of Percival Pickering, QC, of Cannon Hall, Barnsley, Evelyn De Morgan showed a formidably precocious talent. Braving parental disapproval, she entered the Slade in 1873 at the age of seventeen, the year the present lot was executed, but two years later, despite having won the Slade scholarship, she left to study in Italy. In 1877, still aged only twenty-one, she was invited to contribute to the first exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery, the flagship of the Aesthetic Movement; and she continued to show there until 1887 when she transferred to its successor, the New Gallery. Predominantly known as a painter her work was in the Pre-Raphaelite style, full of allegory and symbolism. The majority of De Morgan's works were based on literary sources, mainly of Greek mythological subjects. She was influenced by G. F. Watts, who admired her work enormously; Burne-Jones, who had his reservations; and her uncle on her mother's side, J. R. Spencer Stanhope. Stanhope had settled in Florence in the early 1870s, and a further link was forged by her marriage in 1887 to the potter William De Morgan, since it was necessary for them to spend the winters in Florence on account of his delicate health.