Neglected Masterpieces Full of Coded Messages About World War I

Mysterious and pioneering, the lesser-known Pre-Raphaelite, Evelyn de Morgan’s paintings explored the pain and meaning of war – and forged the pre-eminent outlines of contemporary fantasy art. On a rocky beach glowing red with lava, smoke-breathing dragons surround hapless prisoners, begging an angel to release them from their suffering. Evelyn de Morgan’s oil painting Death of the Dragon at first glance looks like a scene from the New Testament’s apocalyptic Book of Revelation. But, painted between 1914 and 1918, it is something more personal and critical: a metaphor for the suffering and bonds of World War I, and the conflict between good and evil. The spectacular painting, 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. The rarely seen work from the de Morgan Foundation, as well as two newly restored paintings completed last year and two reconstructions, which build on works lost in a fire in an art warehouse in 1991.

The Trustees of the De Morgan Foundation have commissioned Evelyn De Morgan's "Apocalyptic Death of the Dragon" (1914-18) as an allegory of the First World War (Credit: Trustees of the De Morgan Foundation) The Trustees of the De Morgan Foundation Evelyn De Morgan's "Apocalyptic Death of the Dragon" (1914-18) as an allegory of the First World War (Credit: Trustees of the De Morgan Foundation) The event coincides with the reopening of the De Morgan Museum in Barnsley, Yorkshire, following an extensive roof renovation, and responds to the growing interest in this lesser-known artist. Her husband William – a ceramics expert and writer who worked with textile designer William Morris early in his career – and the famous figures in their circle – for example, her uncle and art teacher, John Rodham Spencer Stanhope, and the painters William Holman Hunt and Dante Gabriel Rossetti – have captivated her. Most of what we know about de Morgan today comes from her sister Wilhelmina, who founded the De Morgan Foundation, but even she saw fit to publish a posthumous biography of the couple under the title William De Morgan and His Wife. Nevertheless, it is Evelyn De Morgan who deserves the late praise of the art world. A graduate of the Slade, who was working at the tail end of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, she arguably took the twee or overly sentimental genre into new territory, producing tableaux that were unusually visionary and energetic. The women he depicted were less passive than those depicted by his contemporaries and appeared as symbols of agency rather than objects of the male gaze. Instead of drowned bodies floating on the banks of rivers like Sir John Everett Millais’s Ophelia, or faces whose main currency was money, we meet skilled sorceresses who concoct magical potions and flying superheroines who can cast rain, thunder, and lightning from their fingers.

These goddess-like figures show the influence of the classical art that De Morgan studied. Perfectly executed works such as Boreas and Orestesia (1896) reveal his interest in mythology and his skill with the human form that recalls Michelangelo. In "Death of the Dragon", compositionally, the influence of Sandro Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus" (1483-1485) is easily seen, which de Morgan visited in Florence. If de Morgan's radiant angel echoes this idea of reincarnation - reflecting the artist's belief in a spiritual afterlife - then the winged creatures are his counterpart, Death, which always bites people's heels and threatens to overpower them. Elsewhere in his work, Death takes alternative forms: a dark angel carrying a sickle, a sea monster or - more obliquely - an hourglass. It is a symbolism that speaks of the transience of life and acquires additional intensity in his later work, expressing the collective trauma of living through a world war that claimed almost a million British lives. "They [the de Morgans] were in London during the First World War, so they were directly affected," Jean McMeekin, chair of the board of trustees of the de Morgan Foundation, told the BBC. "Death was real to them in a way that we've probably forgotten about in most cases these days," she noted. "William's family members were dying of tuberculosis, and his own health was often quite poor. Death, in a way, was always present in the background." More: • Why this iconic 1839 painting is not what it seems • The surprising story of Van Gogh's guardian angel • Nine fascinating, rare images of 19th-century America De Morgan was a pacifist, and his art became a form of activism. In "Our Lady of Peace" (1907), a knight pleads for protection and peace in response to the Boer War, while "The Poor Man Who Saved the City" (1901) advocates wisdom and diplomacy as alternatives to military intervention. Later, in the book "The Red Cross" (1914-16), the angel