... 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.....
After Evelyn’s marriage to William De Morgan in 1877 she begins to incorporate more moral and spiritual issues into her works and the style of her painting evolves accordingly. Spiritualism was a popular strand of unorthodox belief from the mid-19th century originating in America, with séances, table-turnings, and levitations, through the control of a medium. William De Morgan’s mother, Sophia, was a clairvoyant medium and she encouraged William and Evelyn to think similarly. After the marriage of Evelyn and William in 1887, the couple began a prolonged ‘experiment’ with automatic (or trance) spirit writing which resulted in the anonymous publication in 1909 of the transcripts of The Result of an Experiment. ....
"The Love Potion" has lots of likeable stuff---books, cat, open windows, oriental rugs, and a reflection of a happy marriage. Her husband was a part of the Victorian arts and crafts movement. He was a potter. About their marriage we learn from an Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article:
On 5 March 1887 De Morgan married Evelyn Pickering ....Talented, humorous, and forthright, she had established herself as a successful painter despite, it seems, the opposition of her wealthy family. He was forty-eight, she was thirty-two. She painted sumptuous figure subjects with lofty themes in a late Pre-Raphaelite manner-all that her whimsical husband's pots and tiles were not. But they made an excellent couple. As a small sign of their mutual eccentricity, they were married quietly, went to the railway station, and caught the first train that happened to be available; it took them to the Isle of Wight. On their return they settled into 1 The Vale, King's Road, Chelsea, next door to James McNeill Whistler. It was a childless marriage, but successful; they laughed at each other a lot, and she strengthened his resolve.
..... in 1889 he moved ...[his] pottery to purpose-built premises nearer home, off Townmead Road in Fulham. These were financed partly by Evelyn and partly by the architect Halsey Ricardo, with whom he formed a partnership in 1888. The Fulham phase of De Morgan's work lasted longer than any other and saw its crowning achievements, especially in lustre wares of great technical and aesthetic sophistication. But the benefit of the move was partly lost in 1892, when doctors advised that he should spend the winters outside Britain. From 1892 the De Morgans wintered in Florence.
.....
Just as the pottery was closing down, De Morgan became a best-selling novelist. This man in his sixties, who had hardly written anything and not read much, who had been absorbed all his life in the wordless conventions of the decorative arts, was now full of words. In 1901 he had begun to write a story, and then put it by. He was about to throw it away with other papers when Evelyn looked at it and encouraged him to go on. By 1904 there was a manuscript of 500,000 words. It was published in July 1906 as Joseph Vance: an Ill-Written Autobiography and became a best-seller. The inconsequence of the whole affair delighted De Morgan, and he continued to be puzzled by his own success. ....
After Evelyn’s marriage to William De Morgan in 1877 she begins to incorporate more moral and spiritual issues into her works and the style of her painting evolves accordingly. Spiritualism was a popular strand of unorthodox belief from the mid-19th century originating in America, with séances, table-turnings, and levitations, through the control of a medium. William De Morgan’s mother, Sophia, was a clairvoyant medium and she encouraged William and Evelyn to think similarly. After the marriage of Evelyn and William in 1887, the couple began a prolonged ‘experiment’ with automatic (or trance) spirit writing which resulted in the anonymous publication in 1909 of the transcripts of The Result of an Experiment. ....
"The Love Potion" has lots of likeable stuff---books, cat, open windows, oriental rugs, and a reflection of a happy marriage. Her husband was a part of the Victorian arts and crafts movement. He was a potter. About their marriage we learn from an Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article:
On 5 March 1887 De Morgan married Evelyn Pickering ....Talented, humorous, and forthright, she had established herself as a successful painter despite, it seems, the opposition of her wealthy family. He was forty-eight, she was thirty-two. She painted sumptuous figure subjects with lofty themes in a late Pre-Raphaelite manner-all that her whimsical husband's pots and tiles were not. But they made an excellent couple. As a small sign of their mutual eccentricity, they were married quietly, went to the railway station, and caught the first train that happened to be available; it took them to the Isle of Wight. On their return they settled into 1 The Vale, King's Road, Chelsea, next door to James McNeill Whistler. It was a childless marriage, but successful; they laughed at each other a lot, and she strengthened his resolve.
..... in 1889 he moved ...[his] pottery to purpose-built premises nearer home, off Townmead Road in Fulham. These were financed partly by Evelyn and partly by the architect Halsey Ricardo, with whom he formed a partnership in 1888. The Fulham phase of De Morgan's work lasted longer than any other and saw its crowning achievements, especially in lustre wares of great technical and aesthetic sophistication. But the benefit of the move was partly lost in 1892, when doctors advised that he should spend the winters outside Britain. From 1892 the De Morgans wintered in Florence.
.....
Just as the pottery was closing down, De Morgan became a best-selling novelist. This man in his sixties, who had hardly written anything and not read much, who had been absorbed all his life in the wordless conventions of the decorative arts, was now full of words. In 1901 he had begun to write a story, and then put it by. He was about to throw it away with other papers when Evelyn looked at it and encouraged him to go on. By 1904 there was a manuscript of 500,000 words. It was published in July 1906 as Joseph Vance: an Ill-Written Autobiography and became a best-seller. The inconsequence of the whole affair delighted De Morgan, and he continued to be puzzled by his own success. ....
Morgan left it up to his characters to develop the story, and he read each week's writing over to his wife, thus populating their homes. He found it easier to write in Florence, and their flat in the via Lungo il Mugnone, which had been full of Evelyn's high themes and William's comic frogs and startled deer, became full of Evelyn's high themes and William's cockney scamps. But by 1914 Florence had become melancholy to them through the deaths of friends, and they went back to London for good. In 1910 they had moved from The Vale to 127 Church Street, Chelsea, where they lived for the rest of their lives. De Morgan, now seventy-five, was still writing, ... He was a familiar figure in the streets of Chelsea during the war, carrying the shopping home, taking his evening walk on the Embankment, white-haired, a little bent, but brisk and frank. He died at his home on 15 January 1917 .... Evelyn died on 2 May 1919 and is buried with him. The draped classical figures of Grief and Joy on their tombstone, which she designed, recall her more than him.
No comments:
Post a Comment