De Morgan, Emily. Family name Pickering. When sixteen years old, this artist entered the Slade School,
and eighteen months later received the Slade Scholarship, by which she was entitled to benefit for three years. At the end of the first year, however, she resigned this privilege because she did not wish to accept the conditions of the gift.
As a child she had loved the pictures of the precursors of Raphael, in the National Gallery, and her first exhibited picture, "Ariadne in Naxos," hung in the Grosvenor Gallery in 1877, proved how closely she had studied these old masters. At this time she knew nothing of the English Pre-Raphaelites; later, however, she became one of the most worthy followers of Burne-Jones.
About the time that she left the Slade School one of her uncles took up his residence in Florence, where she has spent several winters in work and study.
One of her most important pictures is inscribed with these lines:
"Dark is the valley of shadows,
Empty the power of kings;
Blind is the favor of fortune,
Hungry the caverns of death.
Dun is the light from beyond,
Unanswered the riddle of life."
This pessimistic view of the world is illustrated by the figure of a king, who, in the midst of ruins, places his foot upon the prostrate form of a chained victim; Happiness, with bandaged eyes, scatters treasures into the bottomless pit, a desperate youth being about to plunge into its
