Page 13 - A Family Of Artists: De Morgan Collection at Cannon Hall Museum 2020

Artistic Training and Techniques
Evelyn De Morgan displayed a flair for art from an early age. On the morning of her seventeenth birthday she wrote:
'17 today, that is to say seventeen years wasted in eating, dawdling and flittering (frittering) time away... Art is eternal,
but life is short... I have not a moment to lose'.
In the same year Evelyn drew a study of the male nude from a wooden model scandalising her drawing teacher, who had been employed to instruct her in the traditional feminine arts of copying fruit and flowers.
Roddam encouraged his niece to train as a professional artist and convinced her parents to allow her to study at art school. Indeed he felt that Evelyn's talents were greater than his own and commented; 'You can draw infinitely better than I do, I can only envy you!'
During the Victorian period artists were taught in a specific way. Firstly they copied anatomical figures from ancient sculptures before moving on to draw from life models. Students were then encouraged to produce numerous sketches in watercolours and oils prior to working on their final canvases. Both Roddam and Evelyn followed this taught technique throughout their careers as the pictures in this corridor demonstrate.
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