Cedric Morris, one of the most original British painters of the twentieth century, was the son of the iron magnate George Lockwood Morris, 8th Bt. In 1914 Morris studied at the Académie Delacluse in Paris, before spending the First World War in the Army Remount Service with Alfred Munnings and Cecil Aldin. In 1918 Morris met his lifelong partner, the artist Lett Haines, and the pair settled in Newlyn, Cornwall.
Morris’s 1928 exhibition at Arthur Tooth, which included some of his powerful and mysterious animal paintings, was a sellout. A gentle countryman who liked to paint with his pet rabbit Maria Marten perched on his shoulder, Morris seemed to distil the essence of flowers, birds and animals in colourful, richly-textured works. Wry humour, and his admiration for Italian ‘primitives’ such as Piero della Francesca, is apparent in a work of 1926, The entry of moral turpitude into New York (private collection, England), sparked by the American authorities’ refusal to let a divorced, titled Englishwoman enter the USA.
Throughout his career Cedric painted portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and flower and animal studies in equal measure. He painted in a very direct and idiosyncratic way, using bold impasto colour. Today he is perhaps best known for his flower paintings, particularly of irises. Cedric was principally a painter, but also an avid and experimental plantsman.
He died on 8 February 1982. His for former pupil, Maggi Hambling visited him on the day before his death and afterwards drew a portrait of him.