Born into a wealthy, upper-class family, Evelyn De Morgan had to battle with her parents to be allowed to become a professional artist. It wasn’t the done thing for a young woman. Her mother said, ‘I want a daughter, not an artist’. She expected Evelyn to be presented as a debutante to high society. Evelyn said if such a thing happened, she would ‘kick the Queen!”.

It wasn’t that she disliked Queen Victoria, but she did question the place of the monarchy in modern society through her deeply symbolic pictures.

Her symbolic queens encompass material wealth, question traditional religious values and interrogate our moral judgement.

Join Sarah Hardy, Director of the De Morgan Collection to take an in-depth look at De Morgan’s queens and learn what they stand for.