Evelyn Pickering De Morgan and the Allegorical Body

by Elise Lawton Smith

This book is the first comprehensive study of the paintings of Evelyn Pickering De Morgan (1855-1919), one of the most significant and prolific Victorian women artists. Her complex and richly layered iconography, expressed in a polished late Pre-Raphaelite style, and centered on the female body (the protagonist in almost all her paintings), fuses metaphysical concerns about material embodiment and spiritual transcendence with social concerns about debilitating constraints and creative freedom. This book is lavishly illustrated, containing over 100 black-and-white pictures and more than 10 color plates; all are works by Evelyn Pickering De Morgan, which are described and examined in the text itself.

Hardcover

Published May 1, 2002