Evelyn De Morgan constructed her chalk and pencil study from a richly coloured, highly detailed oil on canvas she called Earthbound. Here, a grasping king swathed in orange and pinpricks of gold attempts to desperately claw at the last of his coins, whilst an angelic being swoops over him. In the distance, a lone figure bathed in light gestures up towards the ombre heavens, in an indication of the underlying religiosity of De Morgan's oil painting. None of this becomes evident, however, from her chalk and pencil study of two reclining figures. What is the purpose of exploring these preparatory sketches? Why are they important or useful?
In the oil painting, De Morgan's miserly king is noticeably male, from his bushy grey hair and beard. In the chalk study, the artist has chosen a female figure in both instances, to work out her final composition, firstly in the nude before layering the draperies onto the figure. It highlights the constraints of the nineteenth century female artist, who had access to female modes but rarely nude men. More importantly however, it shows the adaptability of De Morgan - she used men and women interchangeably in her paintings and drawings. In actual fact, gender was of less importance to her, and it is often difficult to identify the sex of her figures. Instead of focusing on the specifics of male and female, De Morgan explored colour, form, composition and the belief in the finished work of art as an aesthetic product. She meticulously prepared her canvases, working out each stage and preparing multiple drawings for one work, from single body parts to full figures as depicted here. De Morgan's apparent disregard of gender is further evidenced by her favouring of Italian Alessandro di Marco, as a model for both male and female subjects. He was used for the flying Boreas in De Morgan's Boreas and Oreithyia, yet appears much more androgynous in Blindness and Cupidity Chasing Joy from the City as a crowned, draped figure with one outstretched arm and a cornucopia of riches tucked under the other.
Through an exploration of preparatory work, one immediately senses the hand of De Morgan. The strokes of chalk and pastel are tactile and immediate, giving a freshness to the line which is less apparent in a finished oil painting, as colour begins to take over. Equally, preparatory work can be used as evidence of strong, successful training in drawing. De Morgan had been taught at the progressive Slade School of Art in the early 1870s and took classes in anatomy to further her knowledge of the human body. The pose she chooses for this Study for Earthbound is complex - a reclining figure with crossed legs and outstretched arms, the head tilted down so that the face remains mostly in shadow. The artist has to maintain the proportions of the body accurately, depict the extremities of the hands and feet with realism, whilst giving only a hint of the figure's facial features. De Morgan supplemented her artistic training with visits to Italy, exploring the drawings of Renaissance artists both there and closer to home, for example at the British Museum. Building up a repertoire of sources, she could enhance her own skills. De Morgan certainly valued drawing as much as she appreciated her oils, choosing them for particular exhibitions and even experimenting with materials, as her eighteen exquisite gold drawings from the middle part of her career suggest. Despite their fragility and the concessions that must be made to exhibit them, preparatory drawings should be displayed and should be treated on the same level as 'finished' works of art. It is fascinating to uncover the processes, techniques and methods of artists, and the steps they took to work up finished designs.
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