From her introduction to spiritualism in the early 1880s until her death, Evelyn De Morgan painted only three portraits, all of loved ones. These portraits are undeniably strange, unusual in their refusal to treat their sitters’ faces as psychologically legible—or indeed as home to any animating spark whatsoever. This talk argues that this strangeness is inextricable from De Morgan’s spiritualist convictions. Situating these portraits in the context of scientific and spiritualist ideas about the self circulating in her networks at the fin-de-siècle — from ether bodies to the subliminal self — this talk explores how De Morgan grappled with the challenge of depicting an essentially invisible self in paint, and lays out new methods for approaching a practice of portrait-painting uninterested in the face.

Dr Emma Merkling is an art historian specialising on the intersections between art, science, and spiritualism in the long nineteenth century. She completed a PhD on Evelyn De Morgan at the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2021, parts of which have been published with Yale UP and are forthcoming with Art History. Emma is currently based at the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies International at Durham University, and co-hosts ‘Drawing Blood’, a podcast about art, science and medicine, and the macabre.

Image: Portraits of William De Morgan (main image: 1893, second image below: 1909) both by Evelyn De Morgan