An Androgynous Alliance: Evelyn De Morgan and ‘The Little Mermaid’

Abstract

Evelyn De Morgan (1855–1919) was a second wave Pre-Raphaelite artist, best known for her large-scale paintings of female figures. In this article, I conduct a detailed study of her androgynous mermaid triptych based upon Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ (1837), taking into account the artist’s biographical influences, as well as the cultural significance of the story itself. The three oil paintings, namely ‘The Little Sea Maid’ (1886), ‘The Sea Maidens’ (1888) and ‘Daughters of The Mist’ (1914), depict three different scenes in the tale, from the mermaid’s transition into human form, to her sisters’ plea for her to return to sea, to her eventual death and absorption into a purgatory-like state. I argue that these three paintings act both as a vehicle through which to support the ongoing fight for women’s rights, and as a symbol for De Morgan’s concept of theistic evolution. These two motives have been identified separately in the limited scholarship on these works, but the possibility that both exist simultaneously is as yet unexplored.