On her seventeenth birthday, August 30th 1872, Evelyn De Morgan wrote in her diary: "At the beginning of each year I say 'I will do something' and at the end I have done nothing. Art is eternal, but life is short". This statement illustrates the themes which were to dominate her adult life and career as a professional artist.

De Morgan was a successful and prolific artist, exhibiting a range of her works from 1877 until her death in 1919. Her style is distinctive in its rich use of colour, allegory and the dominance of the female form. Her paintings display a specific interest in the confinement and limitations of the physical body on earth. Often this is resolved through death.

Her favourite model, Jane Hales, was once...