This weekend, I had the absolute joy of seeing this Evelyn de Morgan painting of “Flora”, which you can find at Delaware Art Museum.

It was pretty magical as I’ve had a postcard of it above my desk for so long!

Combining influences from Botticelli’s “Primavera” and “The Birth of Venus”, de Morgan (whose first name was actually Mary – she used her middle name to exhibit to slightly obscure her gender) lived in Florence during the winter from 1890 onwards, soaking up the Renaissance influences that had been with her since her time at the Slade School of Art.

At the age of 17, around the time she began studying art (first at South Kensington National Art Training School, which was too focussed on traditional feminine accomplishment, so she went to Slade), she wrote in her diary:

“Art is eternal, life is short…”