Head of a Girl

Evelyn de Morgan

Coloured chalks on buff paper

11 ½ x 8 inches

Courtesy of the Maas Gallery.

In the morning of her seventeenth birthday, Evelyn Pickering recorded in her diary that: ‘Art is eternal, but life is short ... I will make up for it now, I have not a moment to lose’. She studied at the Slade and, a precocious draughtsman, won several awards and a scholarship (which she declined, because it required drawing in charcoal, which did not suit her precise, hard-edged drawing style). Her uncle, the painter John Rodham Spencer-Stanhope, who lived in Florence from 1880, encouraged her to travel and study in Italy. A wealthy and well-born woman, she married the impoverished ceramicist William de Morgan in 1887. The model here, Ethel Pickering, was Evelyn de Morgan’s sister-in-law, married to her brother Percival. Little is known of Ethel, save for family notes, which describe her as fiercely independent; she amassed considerable wealth, and apparently built herself a large house in the Scottish borders. — Maas Gallery

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