Esoteric and pioneering, the paintings of a lesser-known Pre-Raphaelite, Evelyn De Morgan, explored the trauma and meaning of war – and prefigured current fantasy art.
On a rocky beach that glows red with lava, smoke-breathing dragons surround wretched-looking prisoners beseeching an angel to deliver them from suffering. The oil painting Death of the Dragon by Evelyn De Morgan looks at first like a scene from the New Testament’s apocalyptic Book of Revelation. But, painted between 1914 and 1918, it’s also something more personal and critical: an allegory for the misery and bondage of World War One, and the confrontation between good and evil.
The spectacular painting, measuring more than a metre high, is one of the highlights of a new exhibition, Evelyn De Morgan: The Modern Painter in Victorian London, at London’s Guildhall Art Gallery, home to the City of London Corporation’s art collection. On display are rarely seen works from the De Morgan Foundation, as well as two newly-restored paintings and two recreations, completed just last year, of works lost in an art warehouse fire in 1991.
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