Evelyn De Morgan's Female Alchemist in a Figurehead for the Female Artist
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Evelyn De Morgan’s Female Alchemist in The Love Potion: A Figurehead for the Female Artist Gannon __________________________________________________________________________________ Evelyn De Morgan’s Female Alchemist in The Love Potion: A Figurehead for the Female Artist Corinna Gannon Goethe University, Frankfurt Evelyn De Morgan’s enigmatic Pre-Raphaelite and Symbolist allegories are informed by multiple artistic movements.1 They have been interpreted against a feminist backdrop due to her status as a female artist in Victorian and Edwardian England and her personal engagement with women’s rights. They have also been studied as a pacifist response to the major horror of her time, war, and in the context of spiritualism, which had the most profound impact on her visual language and will provide the starting point for this essay’s argument.2 She and her husband, William De Morgan, the famous Arts-and-Crafts 1 Her paintings oscillate between late Pre-Raphaelitism, late Romanticism, Victorian Classicism, Aesthesticism, Decadence, and Symbolism. For a discussion on the evaluation of her work, see Elise Lawton Smith, Evelyn Pickering De Morgan and the Allegorical Body (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002), 13, 54, 203. 2 On De Morgan and feminism, see Pamela Gerrish Nunn, Victorian Women Artists (London: Women’s Press, 1987); Jan Marsh and Pamela Gerrish Nunn, eds., Women Artists and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement (London: Virago Press, 1989); Deborah Cherry, Painting Women: Victorian Women Artists (London: Routledge, 1993); Susan P. Casteras and Linda H. Peterson, A Struggle for Fame: Victorian Women Artists and Authors (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 1994); Jan Marsh and Pamela Gerrish Nunn, eds., Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists (London: Thames and Hudson, 1998); Deborah Cherry, Beyond the Frame: Feminism and Visual Culture, Britain 1850–1900 (London: Routledge, 2000). In 1916, De Morgan exhibited 13 war-related paintings in her studio, see Evelyn De Morgan, Catalogue of an Exhibition of Pictures Painted by Evelyn De Morgan: Exhibited for the Benefit of the British Red Cross and the Italian Croce Rossa (London: n.p., 1916); Judy Oberhausen, “A Horror of War,” in Evelyn de Morgan: Oil Paintings, ed. Catherine Gordon (London: The De Morgan Foundation, 1996), 75–92; Smith, Evelyn Pickering De Morgan, 184–202. On De Morgan and Spiritualism, see Judy Oberhausen, “Evelyn De Morgan and Spiritualism,” in Evelyn de Morgan: Oil Paintings, ed. Catherine Gordon (London: The De Morgan Foundation, 1996), 33–52; Elise Lawton Smith, “Myth as Spiritual Allegory in the Art of Evelyn De Morgan,” The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies 7 (1998): 53–73; Lois Jane Drawmer, “The Impact of Science and Spiritualism on the Works of Evelyn de Morgan, 1870–1919” (PhD diss., Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College, 2001); Smith, Evelyn Pickering De Morgan, 41–53. University of Toronto Art Journal, Spring 2018 56 Evelyn De Morgan’s Female Alchemist __________________________________________________________________________________ designer, ceramist, writer, and son of the spiritualist author Sophia De Morgan,3 were both practicing Spiritualists. In 1909 they anonymously published The Result of an Experiment, the edited automatic writing that resulted from a yearlong investigation into the spirit realm.4 The messages received by a potpourri of voices from angels, allegorical impersonations, spirits of deceased friends, family members, and nameless individuals give insight into the De Morgans’ individual approach to art. In this paper I am going to examine two paintings: The Love Potion (Fig. 1) by Evelyn and The Alchemist’s Daughter (Fig. 7) by William. As indicated by the latter’s title, they address the topic of alchemy which, as I argue, can be seen in analogy with spiritualism due to its emphasis on the progress and transformation of the soul. During the Age of Enlightenment, alchemy was stripped from its esoteric pillar. Apart from a few exceptions, practical alchemy had largely been taken up by chemistry in the 19th century.5 However, its twin pillar, spiritual alchemy, remained alive. Numerous publications as well as the spiritualist and occultist press confirm this drift towards the spiritual branch of alchemy, which seems in its broadest sense related to spiritualist 3 Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan, From Matter to Spirit: The Result of Ten Years’ Experience in Spirit Manifestations (London: Longman, Roberts & Green, 1863). 4 The Result of an Experiment (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., 1909). 5 For the role of alchemy in the history of chemistry, see Jost Weyer, “The Image of Alchemy in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Histories of Chemistry” Ambix 23, no. 2 (1976): p. 65–79. See also Richard Caron, “Alchemy V: 19th–20th Century,” in Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Fig. 1 Evelyn De Morgan, The Love Potion, 1903, Esotericism, ed. Wouter J. Hanegraaff (Leiden: oil on canvas, 104.14 × 52.07 cm, The De Morgan Brill, 2005), 50–58; and Mark S. Morrisson, Modern Collection Storage (Catherine Gordon, ed., Evelyn Alchemy: Occultism and the Emergence of Atomic de Morgan: Oil Paintings (London: The De Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Morgan Foundation, 1996), pl. 42.) 57 University of Toronto Art Journal, Spring 2018 Gannon __________________________________________________________________________________ notions.6 Recent research into 19th century spiritualism has hinted at the necessity of investigating the movement’s roots in Western esotericism.7 Indeed, spiritualism’s well- established connection to Mesmerism, which itself has its roots in the teachings of occult philosophers such as Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim and Paracelsus, gives credence to this link.8 Having grown up in intellectual households that engaged in occult and secret knowledge, the De Morgans would have come across the ancient hermetic tradition.9 The paintings that will be analyzed in the following essay serve as evidence for this trend. It is striking that both artists depict an explicitly female alchemist. As I intend 6 See for example Mary Anne Atwood, A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery and Alchemy (London: Trelawney Saunders, 1850); Ethan Allen Hitchcock, Remarks Upon Alchemy and the Alchemists: Indicating A Method of Discovering the True Nature of Hermetic Philosophy (Boston: Crosby, Nichols and Company, 1857); Arthur Edward Waite, Lives of Alchemystical Philosophers: Based on Materials Collected in 1815 and Supplemented by Recent Researches (London: George Redway 1888) (new edition of Francis Barrett’s publication from 1815). On the occultist press, see Mark S. Morrisson, “The Periodical Culture of the Occult Revival: Esoteric Wisdom, Modernity and Counter-Public Spheres,” Journal of Modern Literature 31, no. 2 (2008): 1–22. 7 Christine Ferguson, “Recent Scholarship on Spiritualism and Science,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and the Occult, ed. Tatiana Kontou and Sarah Willburn (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012), 19–24, 23f. A first attempt was made by Mioara Merie, “The ‘Airy Envelope of the Spirit’: Empirical Eschatology, Astral Bodies and the Spiritualism of the Howitt Circle,” Intellectual History Review 18, no. 2 (2008): 189–206; and Alison Butler, Victorian Occultism and the Making of Modern Magic: Invoking Tradition (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). 8 On the relationship between Mesmerism and 19th century occultism and spiritualism, see Atwood, A Suggestive Inquiry, 514; Cottie Arthur Burland, The Arts of the Alchemists (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1967), 124–138; see also Anneliese Ego, “Animalischer Magnetismus” oder “Aufklärung”: Eine mentalitätsgeschichtliche Studie zum Konflikt um ein Heilkonzept im 18. Jahrhundert (Würzburg: Könighausen und Neumann, 1991), 46ff.; Merie, “The ‘Airy Envelope of the Spirit’,” 198f. 9 Evelyn’s sister Wilhelmina Stirling published a biography on the artistic couple in 1922. Her record of her childhood gives insight into Evelyn’s versatile education that was in particular encouraged by their mother: “she [their mother] dwelt on the discoveries of astronomy, the grand riddle of the stars which looked like glittering dust strewn over the dome of heaven; the marvels of chemistry, of geology, of the practical application of many recent discoveries.” Anna Maria Diana Wilhelmina Stirling, William de Morgan and His Wife (London: Thornton Butterworth Limited, 1922), 144. Yet the source of occult knowledge must be mainly traced back to William’s mother, Sophia De Morgan, herself a spiritualist healer and writer, op. cit. For her intellectual background, see her biography edited by her daughter Mary: Mary A. De Morgan, Threescore Years and Ten: Reminiscences of the Late Sophia Elizabeth De Morgan (London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1895). William’s father was the famous mathematician Augustus De Morgan. In Sophia’s biography, his familiarity with Agrippa is attested; De Morgan, Threescore Years and Ten, 127. University of Toronto Art Journal, Spring 2018 58 Evelyn De Morgan’s Female Alchemist __________________________________________________________________________________ to demonstrate, this iconographic formula has no antecedents, which invites reflection upon the De Morgans’ motives for this unusual reversal of a traditionally gendered role. In The Love Potion, a red-haired woman dressed in a golden gown is seated in a richly-decorated study stocked with books, pouring a red liquid into a silver chalice. A black cat is cowering at