Portrait of Mary De Morgan (?). William (or Evelyn) De Morgan. Signed with a monogram (lower left), once thought to have been a joint monogram but more recently ascribed simply to William. Oil on canvas. 12 x 10 in. (30.5 x 25.4 cm.), c. 1863 (at earliest). Private Collection. Image, detail about the precise artistic context, and some of the items in the bibliography, very kindly provided by Dennis T. Lanigan.
This lovely portrait is very Pre-Raphaelite in feeling: it is reflective of the Venetian High Renaissance art that influenced artists within the Pre-Raphaelite circle in the 1860s. In its softness of focus and the girl's not quite direct, wide-eyed but unseeing, inward-looking gaze, it is rather like Joanna Boyce Wells's Thou Bird of God (1861). But the portrait is controversial: the identity of both the young sitter and its artist are in dispute.
As for the latter, there are strong grounds for supposing that the artist is William De Morgan rather than his wife Evelyn. The salient fact here is that the monogrammed signature is only found on one other work in the couple's oeuvre, and that is a drawing by William in the De Morgan Foundation's collection, dating to July 1865. This portrait, then, would seem to belong to a period when not only was its style very much of the moment, but William himself had still not channelled his artistic talent entirely into ceramics. In fact, he is known to have shown a portrait (Head of Girl) at the Royal Academy in 1863: since no other portrait that fits this description is known to exist, this might well be the very one.
In all likelihood, then, the sitter in this warm, tender and empathetic work would have been his sister, Mary, the youngest of his siblings, to whom he was especially close. Her appearance seems more or less to answer Anna Wilhelmina Stirling's description of her as "small and slight, with china-blue eyes and regular features" (105) — the digital image does not do justice to the rich "Venetian colouring" of the original, in which the eyes are indeed a shade of blue. She would have been the right kind of age, too — about thirteen at this time.
The other school of thought, that the sitter was perhaps one of William's nieces, specifically one of his younger brother Edward Lindsay De Morgan's daughters, Mary Beatrice (Molly), Augustus and (Millicent) Milly, would ascribe the work to a much later date. These girls were not even born until the 1870s. By the time they reached an age when one of them could be painted for such a portrait, De Morgan was fully immersed in his highly successful career in art-pottery.
After all, the artist and sitter cannot be confirmed with absolute certainty. But if indeed this is a portrait of Mary De Morgan, as seems more than likely, it provides another glimpse into the character of a thoughtful, earnest and sensitive girl in the glow of her youth. It is particularly valuable for adding depth to Stirling's portrayal of her as simply sparky and outspoken. In view of her interest into the mysterious world of fairytales on the one hand, and her active concern for the less advantaged on the other, these insights confirm sides of Mary De Morgan's character that must certainly have existed. It is a pleasure to enjoy such a delightful portrait with these ideas in mind.
Bibliography
Drawmer, Lois. "British Pictures 1500-1850 & Victorian Pictures." Lot 89. Christie’s, 11 June 2002. https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-3934935.
Hardy, Sarah. "William De Morgan: Forgotten Pre-Raphaelite Artist." De Morgan Foundation lecture. 19 November 2021.
Oberhausen, Judy and Peeters, Nic. “Family & Friends: The Re-Emergence of a Double-Portrait by Evelyn De Morgan.” Review of the Pre-Raphaelite Society. XXVII, No. 3 (Autumn 2019): 8 & 10.
Stirling, A.M.W. William De Morgan and his wife. London: Butterworth, 1922. Internet Archive, from a copy in Robarts Library, University of Toronto. Web. 18 March 2025.
Created 20 March 2025