Moonbeams Dipping Into The Sea 1918

Evelyn De Morgan made this fantasy scene, I’m guessing, with oils on canvas, and the process looks like a slow layering of luminous figures and watery pastel skies. I imagine De Morgan, in her studio, conjuring these otherworldly figures—three graces from mythology—descending from a moon that looks like a giant pearl. You know, painting like this is like trying to catch a dream. The figures are connected by a sheer scarf, and their bodies have this pearlescent sheen. It’s as if she’s not just painting figures, but also the cool light that surrounds them. The figure at the bottom dips a toe into the water, and you can see the care De Morgan took with the ripple effects. It’s so delicate and precise; she must have been holding her breath. Her Pre-Raphaelite paintings, with all this attention to detail, remind me of Botticelli, but with a Victorian sense of propriety. It’s this combo of sensual and cerebral that keeps artists in dialogue, each generation translating the past to imagine a future.