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Introduction
Evelyn De Morgan’s The Worship of Mammon (1909) stands among her most powerful moral allegories, uniting Pre‑Raphaelite detail, Symbolist depth, and the artist’s fervent pacifist convictions. Spanning nearly five feet in height, this oil on canvas depicts a solitary, anguished figure kneeling before a monumental bronze effigy of Mammon—the personification of wealth and avarice—while a barren landscape unfolds beneath a cold twilight sky. In her rendering, De Morgan combines meticulous naturalism with sweeping symbolic resonance, crafting a scene that indicts the dehumanizing worship of material riches. Through nuanced composition, dramatic color contrasts, and layered iconography, The Worship of Mammon offers a searing critique of greed’s corrosive power and a timeless warning about the price of spiritual bankruptcy.
Historical and Social Context
Painted in 1909, The Worship of Mammon emerged during a period of profound social and economic transformation in Britain. The dawn of the twentieth century saw unprecedented industrial expansion alongside widening social disparities. While technological advances promised progress, they also exacerbated urban poverty and fostered a relentless cult of consumerism among the affluent. Evelyn De Morgan, the daughter of a prominent socialist MP, embraced pacifism and Christian Socialism, believing that art should confront injustice and stir moral reflection. In The Worship of Mammon, De Morgan channels her critiques of capitalist excess into a haunting tableau that resonates with the era’s anxieties about wealth, power, and the erosion of spiritual values.
Artistic Lineage and Influences
De Morgan’s artistic formation under Pre‑Raphaelite mentors such as John Roddam Spencer Stanhope and Ford Madox Brown instilled in her a passion for ardent detail and medieval revivalism. Yet she diverged from strict Pre‑Raphaelitism by incorporating Symbolist tenets, emphasizing mood and psychological nuance over straightforward narrative. The towering figure of Mammon recalls classical personifications of vices found in Renaissance moral allegories, while the kneeling mortal evokes Renaissance donors portrayed in penitent postures. De Morgan’s palette—combining earthy ochres for the idol and luminous flesh tones for the worshipper—echoes Venetian coloring techniques, yet her stark chiaroscuro and simplified background reflect the influence of contemporaries like Odilon Redon. By weaving these threads together, she forged a unique visual language capable of conveying both vivid realism and transcendent moral inquiry.
Subject Matter and Iconography
At the center of the painting looms the colossal bronze form of Mammon, his muscular torso and massive hand dominating the right half of the canvas. He stands atop a stepped pedestal of cold stone, his feet planted firmly, his right hand extended with palm open, as if to receive offerings. The idol’s features are severed by shadow, suggesting blind idolatry, and the greenish patina of his metal flesh evokes the corrosive nature of greed.
Before him kneels a lone worshipper, a slender woman whose gently bowed head and clasped hands mirror the submissive gestures of medieval penitents. Her lips are parted in a silent plea or invocation, and tears glisten wetly on her cheeks, suggesting a soul in anguish. She wears a simple gray gown that catches the last light of dusk, its folds articulated with Pre‑Raphaelite precision. Scattered at her knees lie small coins—her sacrifice—tumbling helplessly toward the cracked earth.
Behind the pair stretches a desolate plain under a bruised purple sky. A distant river winds through barren hills, reflecting flecks of the fading sunset. Above, a few pale stars emerge, haloed by an uneasy quiet. The landscape’s emptiness underscores the futility of Mammon worship: where spiritual riches once flourished, only emptiness remains.
Composition and Spatial Arrangement
De Morgan structures The Worship of Mammon around a powerful diagonal axis that runs from the lower left, where the coins pool, upward toward the idol’s imposing hand. This line draws attention to the act of offering and to the gulf dividing mortal supplicant from lifeless deity. The kneeling figure occupies the lower third of the canvas, her small scale amplifying Mammon’s gargantuan presence. By contrast, the horizon lies low, creating a sense of open, infinite emptiness beyond the central drama.
The idol’s broad shoulder and muscular arm fill the right edge of the painting, his sheer volume pressing the viewer’s eye inward. The worshipper is painted slightly left of center, creating a tension between victim and oppressor. De Morgan balances these weights through color contrasts: the idol’s warm brown and green patina asserts physical solidity, while the woman’s ivory‑tinged flesh and silvery dress glow with vulnerability.
Open space above the figures—dominated by the surveying twilight—evokes moral and existential voids, while the few emerging stars hint at distant promises of hope. This spacious, stripped‑down background prevents any distraction from the core allegory and underscores the painting’s universal resonance.
Color, Light, and Painterly Technique
Evelyn De Morgan’s virtuosity in handling oil paint is on full display in The Worship of Mammon. She employs a restrained palette of browns, grays, and muted blues, punctuated by touches of ochre and silver. The idol’s patinated bronze torso emerges from deep umbers and greenish earth pigments, while the woman’s dress combines mixtures of lead white with faint ultramarine and pink earth to achieve a delicate luminescence.
Light in the painting is dusky but penetrating. A subtle westering glow silhouettes Mammon’s outline and highlights the worshipper’s up‑turned face. This chiaroscuro effect heightens the emotional stakes, rendering the viewer a witness to a scene half‑lit by a dying day. De Morgan’s use of glazes—thin, transparent layers of paint—allows the underpainting’s warm tones to shine through, giving flesh and cloth an inner glow. In the idol’s reflection-bearing surface, she layers thicker passages of paint with slight impasto, simulating the tactile weight of metal. This interplay of thin and thick paint creates a dynamic tension between translucence and opacity, reinforcing the painting’s thematic contrasts.
Thematic Interpretation
At its core, The Worship of Mammon dramatizes the conflict between spiritual integrity and the seductions of wealth. Mammon, as didactic literature throughout the medieval and early modern periods warned, represents greed’s false sovereignty: a power that demands devotion but yields only desolation. The worshipper’s tears and pleading gaze convey her realization that material offerings will neither satisfy her soul nor redeem her suffering. The sparse, cracked soil at her knees suggests that where Mammon reigns, spiritual nourishment is drained away.
De Morgan’s painting also engages with feminist concerns. The worshipper is female, aligning Mammon’s cult with patriarchal structures that often commodify women’s bodies and labor. Her modest attire and the vulnerability of her exposed neck evoke Christian iconography of female saints who suffer under unjust power. By portraying a woman at Mammon’s mercy, De Morgan underscores the gendered dimensions of material exploitation.
Furthermore, the painting reflects De Morgan’s pacifist stance. Just as Mammon demands monetary tribute, war demands blood tribute; both forms of violence exploit the vulnerable. The empty horizon and star‑pricked sky suggest that true hope lies not in worldly powers—whether riches or militarism—but in transcendent moral values.
Emotional Resonance and Viewer Engagement
Although allegorical, The Worship of Mammon resonates on a visceral level. The kneeling figure’s inward‑turned posture and tear‑streaked face evoke empathy, drawing the viewer into her emotional turmoil. The idol’s blank, unyielding surface reflects the objectification inherent in Mammon worship: wealth cares nothing for those who serve it. Viewers may project their own struggles with material desire onto the scene, finding in the painting a cautionary mirror of personal or societal priorities.
De Morgan’s psychological insight is further conveyed through the painting’s silence. No triumphant trumpet heralds Mammon’s presence; no crowds surround the worshipper. The stillness amplifies the sense of moral isolation. In presenting the viewer with such a stark tableau, De Morgan encourages introspection: to recognize which idols—money, status, technology, ideology—one may be worshipping in contemporary life.
Technical and Material Considerations
Evelyn De Morgan executed The Worship of Mammon with the disciplined approach inherited from her Pre‑Raphaelite mentors. Her underdrawing was likely laid out in charcoal or black chalk, fixing key contours and proportions. A muted imprimatura of burnt sienna provided a warm base, allowing subsequent glazes of oil paint to build depth. The idol’s metallic texture was achieved through alternating layers of umber, green earth, and yellow ochre glazes, varnished to unify the surface sheen. For the worshipper’s dress and flesh, De Morgan used fine, soft brushes to blend edges invisibly, creating a smooth, lifelike effect. These materials and methods testify to her mastery of the academic‑influenced training she received alongside her individual Symbolist sensibilities.
Reception and Legacy
When The Worship of Mammon debuted at the New Gallery in London in 1909, it provoked admiration for its technical brilliance and moral bravery. Progressive critics hailed De Morgan’s unflinching indictment of greed, while some conservative voices nonetheless found the painting’s social commentary too direct. Over the twentieth century, as modern art movements favored abstraction, the work receded from public view, preserved in private collections and sporadic exhibitions.
The late twentieth‑ and early twenty‑first‑century revival of interest in women artists and Victorian social critique reinvigorated scholarly attention to The Worship of Mammon. Feminist art historians highlighted De Morgan’s subtle subversion of gender and power dynamics, while social historians recognized the painting as a prescient commentary on capitalism’s excesses. Today, it features prominently in surveys of Symbolist art and in exhibitions exploring art’s engagement with social justice.
Contemporary Resonance
In an age of unprecedented global wealth inequality, climate crisis, and consumer culture, De Morgan’s warning against Mammon worship feels remarkably timely. Movements for economic justice and ethical finance echo the painting’s message that unbridled greed corrodes the social fabric. Environmental advocates view Mammon’s pedestal as a reference to humanity’s exploitation of the earth, recognizing that worship of profit sets the planet on a path to ruin.
Mental health professionals also draw upon the painting’s themes to discuss the psychological toll of materialism. The worshipper’s tears mirror contemporary anxieties about work‑life imbalance, debt, and the hollow pursuit of status. The Worship of Mammon thus continues to function as both moral parable and therapeutic mirror, prompting viewers to evaluate what truly nourishes the human spirit.
Conclusion
Evelyn De Morgan’s The Worship of Mammon endures as a compelling fusion of technical virtuosity, Symbolist vision, and social conscience. Through its monumental composition, resonant color contrasts, and searing allegory, the painting illuminates the perilous consequences of worshipping material wealth. In portraying the anguish of the lone supplicant and the indifferent might of the bronze idol, De Morgan invites viewers across generations to confront their own idols and to seek values that transcend Mammon’s empty throne. Over a century since its creation, The Worship of Mammon continues to captivate and challenge, affirming De Morgan’s legacy as an artist who dared to wield her brush in defense of humanity’s highest aspirations.