Pre-Raphaelite artist Mary Evelyn Pickering De Morgan (1855 - 1919) painted in an elegant style inspired by Italian Renaissance paintings - particularly the work of Botticelli - and often featured female figures and mythological or allegorical subjects in her work.
This month, Wolverhampton Art Gallery exhibits 30 of De Morgan’s oil paintings and drawings. And it’s not the first time that her work has visited the city... The exhibition - titled Painted Dreams - is a recreation of a show held at the same venue in 1907.  
The artworks will be reunited for the first time in 120 years, having been loaned for exhibition from private collections and by the Trustees of the De Morgan Foundation.  
De Morgan studied at Slade School of Art at the University of London, where she excelled, winning a full scholarship and prizes for her work. During her time at the school she chose to paint under her ambiguously gendered middle name, Evelyn. This decision was made so that her work would be judged equally alongside that of her male peers, rather than being subject to the prejudices held against women painters at the time.
These prejudices created an environment in which female artists’ work was rarely showcased in modern galleries - the pursuit of art was not seen as a suitable occupation for women. 
Wolverhampton Art Gallery’s curator in the early 20th century, JJ Brownsword, first encountered De Morgan’s work while he was visiting her husband, ceramics designer William De Morgan. 
Brownsword was enthralled by what he saw, writing in 1906 that De Morgan’s paintings were “vividly impressed on my memory”. 
As curator, Brownsword was invested in bringing the work of unknown artists to exhibit in Wolverhampton. So he wrote to De Morgan, asking her if she “would be so kind as to lend” her artwork “to the Corporation of Wolverhampton for an exhibition at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery”. At the time, it was particularly unusual for a female artist to be the subject of a solo exhibition.
The 1907 show was to be the largest of De Morgan’s career and certainly made an impression. One reviewer at the Wolverhampton Express & Star newspaper described the pictures as “painted dreams”, from which the gallery’s 2024 exhibition takes its evocative title. 
The new exhibition will present the works chronologically, across three galleries, to highlight some of the themes that De Morgan revisited throughout her career. She frequently drew from mythological subjects, one example of which is Flora - a lifesize painting featuring the Roman Goddess of Spring. 
She also painted in an allegorical style, in pieces which reimagine abstract ideas as human figures. One such example is her impressive painting, The Storm Spirits, which shows thunder, lightning and rain represented as three beautiful women. 
Three pictures which were originally exhibited in 1907 were sadly lost in a warehouse fire in 1991. However, local artist Paul Francis-Walker, who also works in the Pre-Raphaelite style, has recreated these paintings for inclusion in the exhibition. The recreation of the lost pieces ensures that the new show is as close as possible to the 1907 display.
Painted Dreams not only showcases the work of a talented artist, but also offers a unique opportunity to dive into the past of the gallery itself. In the recreation of this ground-breaking exhibition, Wolverhampton Art Gallery reconnects with its history - to a time when it was a key player in recognising and elevating De Morgan’s work, and in celebrating a female artist who might otherwise have been disregarded and forgotten.

Image: Love’s Passing, 1883, Evelyn De Morgan © Trustees of the De Morgan Foundation