It is a little-known fact that William De Morgan began his artistic career as a painter. He is much better known for the beautiful iridescent lustreware ceramics he produced. Prior to beginning his career as a ceramic designer however, he studied at the prestigious Cary’s Academy where he learnt to make drawings from the antique cast in order to perfect this skill.

His months of training at Cary’s paid off and he gained a place at the Royal Academy Schools in 1859. Despite his obvious talent as a draftsman, his work in oil on canvas is not as successful. This painting was the only work he ever submitted for a Royal Academy exhibition and it was displayed in 1865. It is believed to be a portrait of one of William's nieces.

William enjoyed a great success as a designer of stained glass from 1862 – 1872. It would seem that he became interested in the medium after meeting William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones and being inspired by their commitment to reviving medieval arts. In particular, they had a love of creating stained glass and designing churches.

He made windows for no fewer than 15 churches from Guernsey to Staffordshire and once commented that it made him ‘more [money] than I have ever earned since’. Despite this, there is little scholarship on his stained glass.

This oil painting was probably made to show the client prior to commencing work. In this case, the client was St Michael’s Church in Rocester, Staffordshire.

Evelyn defied her parents and the gender and class expectations placed upon her to become one of the finest artists of her time. She decided from an early age to become an artist, writing in her diary on her 17th birthday ‘art is eternal, life is short. I have not a moment to lose.’

Almost as soon as she graduated from her art school, she began exhibiting and Ariadne at Naxos was the first work she was invited to exhibit at the avant-garde Grosvenor Gallery.

The picture depicts Ariadne from Greek mythology. She is depicted at the moment when she has been abandoned by Theseus after helping him to defeat the minotaur. The feminist artist hints at her disdain of society's abandonment of women by their lovers in the Victorian period.

This picture was probably one of the last that Evelyn De Morgan ever painted. It depicts the moment at the end of life when an angel has come to welcome the human soul onward. The woman in pink has dropped a torch and we see the flame of life is slowly being extinguished. The demon on her shoulders curls up, rejected. He cannot follow where she is going to. Rainbow swirls represent the movement of the human soul from mortal, earthly life, onward to eternal existence.

When William died two years before his wife Evelyn, she designed a gravestone for the pair of them. It is very similar to this painting, with a living figure extinguishing a lit torch and an angelic figure welcoming their spirit.

The Hourglass by Evelyn De Morgan is one of my favourite paintings in the Collection. It is minutely detailed and richly coloured so it seems to reveal more the longer it is studied. From each bead on the lead character’s dress to each thread on tapestry behind her, the whole piece is immaculately rendered.

The themes of spiritualist hope for the salvation of the human soul, and the artists own view that material wealth should be rejected in favour of spiritual wellbeing are obvious in this picture.

But the choice of model reveals a feminist undertone to the painting. It is Jane Morris, who was a professional model for the Pre-Raphaelites and was married to William Morris.