Philip Richard Morris

Inscriptionback to top

Signed (incised in wet paint) lower left-hand corner: ‘EBlaas’.

This portraitback to top

Philip Morris and Eugen von Blaas shared lodgings in Rome in 1865. The following June von Blaas travelled to London and made contact with Morris, who advised him to show a picture with the dealer Ernest Gambart. It is possible that the portrait of Morris was painted in London during this visit, but the relaxed pose suggests it was more likely made in 1865 while they were living together as art students in Rome. [1] NPG 6654 is one of the earliest oils in the Eugen von Blaas catalogue raisonné, and the earliest known portrait of Morris.

Eugen von Blaas was born at Albano near Rome, one of three artist sons of the Austrian artist Carl von Blaas and an Italian mother. His father became professor at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna, from 1851 and later professor at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice from 1856. The accomplished handling of NPG 6654 reflects early training under the father’s direction. Eugen later succeeded Carl as professor at the Accademia and made a speciality of local, female genre scenes, some of which were exhibited at the Royal Academy (c/o dealers Arthur Tooth & Sons) at dates between 1875 and 1891.

‘In 1858 Morris won the travelling studentship at the Royal Academy and for twenty years he was regarded as one of the most promising of the rising men,’ wrote the Magazine of Art in a posthumous appreciation. [2] The portrait shows Morris as he looked on the cusp of this bright future. Early supporters had included William Holman Hunt and Augustus Leopold Egg. A member of the Chelsea Arts Club and Chelsea resident he was also a friend of James McNeill Whistler before their rift in 1877. [3] The only other oil painting in Morris’s iconography is the self-portrait commissioned by Alexander Macdonald in 1882 (see ‘All known portraits’).

Commander Peter Alison Ross Withers (d.1989), Morris’s grandson, first considered leaving the portrait (with a portrait of Morris’s father the iron-founder, declined) to the National Portrait Gallery in 1973. Family tradition had it that this picture was a self-portrait by Morris painted in Paris in the late 1850s, and it was initially offered as such. Subsequent research by the NPG revealed the artist to be Eugen von Blaas. The bequest was accepted in 2003 (see NPG Review 2003/2004). The canvas arrived without a frame.

Carol Blackett-Ord

Footnotesback to top

1) See Wassibauer 2005, pp.26–7.
2) MA, 1902, p.424.
3) See Pennell & Pennell 1908, vol.1, p.171, for the account of Morris sitting in for the exasperated Carlyle in 1873, ‘to get the coat painted to ideal perfection’ (cf. Whistler’s Arrangement in Grey and Black, No.2: Portrait of Thomas Carlyle).

Physical descriptionback to top

Bust-length, slightly to left, eyes to viewer, russet beard, shock of thick curly hair, wearing loose brown coat over dark jacket, loosely knotted tie, plain dark green background.

Conservationback to top

Conserved, 2004.

Provenanceback to top

The sitter; by descent in family, bequeathed by P.R. Morris’s grandson Commander Peter Alison Ross Withers, 2003.

View all known portraits for Philip Richard Morris