British picture restorers, 1630-1950 - M

Giuseppe Marchi, London from 1752 (initially at Joshua Reynolds's), Maiden Lane (at Mr Maberly's) 1766-1770, Wales 1768-1769, St Martin's Lane (variously at Mr Maberly's, opposite Slaughter's coffee house, or near Long Acre) 1771-1775 or later, Wardour St 1803, Great Compton St 1808. Painter, assistant to Sir Joshua Reynolds, printmaker and picture restorer.

As a young man, the Italian, Joseph Marchi (c.1735?-1808), or to give him his full name, Giuseppe Filippo Liberati Marchi, was brought from Rome by Joshua Reynolds in 1752. Reynolds painted his portrait the following year (Royal Academy).

Marchi was Reynolds's chief studio assistant until 1792, apart from 1768-9 when he worked independently in Wales. Reynolds paid him a salary of £100 p.a. (there is an agreement in Reynolds's ledger, dated 22 November 1764, that Marchi should live in his house and paint for him for six months for £50). He is said to have been responsible for making copies of Reynolds's portraits, and to have kept his sitter books. Marchi was a subscriber to the St Martin's Lane Academy in 1754 (Bignamini 1991 pp.116, 121 n.42) and exhibited at the Society of Artist, 1766-8. He also made a dozen or more mezzotints in the late 1760s and the 1770s, mainly after Reynolds's work.

In his will, made 20 May 1803 and proved 30 April 1808, Joseph Marchi of Wardour St referred to his three sisters (two of whom were nuns at Lodi) and a brother, if still living to receive bequests. He also made bequests to his fellow artists, including Thomas Hearne of Macclesfield St, Joseph Farington, James Nixon and John Leppard. His will was unwitnessed and John Harris, carver and gilder of Conduit St was one of those who appeared before the probate court to verify his handwriting. His pictures, drawings and prints were auctioned by Squibb on 30 June 1808.

According to Marchi's obituary, he had considerable skill in cleaning pictures and, from his intimate knowledge of the principles on which Joshua Reynolds's pictures were painted, he was 'frequently employed to restore such as had suffered by neglect, which he did with great success' (see below). Much of our knowledge of Marchi's later life and his activities as a restorer comes from his friend, Joseph Farington, whom he told in February 1795 that he was 73 or 74 years old, implying a rather earlier birth date of 1721 or 1722 than usually credited. For Farington, he cleaned the sky of his Malvern Abbey in 1794, and proposed to line and clean his portrait of Joshua Reynolds in 1801 (Farington vol.1, p.202, vol.4, p.1527).

Farington appears to have recommended Marchi to various members of the nobility, going with him in 1796 to show him pictures to be cleaned at Lord Walpole's and Lord Orford's, and calling on him a few days later to see the results of this work and what he had done for Mr Walpole (Farington vol.2, pp.586, 591). In 1806 Marchi cleaned a picture for ‘Humphry', presumably the artist Ozias Humphry, who accused him of overcleaning the work (Farington vol.7, p.2730).

Marchi had a particular reputation for restoring pictures by Joshua Reynolds. He was recommended to clean and restore Reynolds's pictures at Belvoir Castle in June 1796, and while there he treated Reynolds's Nativity, by infusing a preparation of paste through the cracks, and cleaned 19 other pictures by Reynolds, charging £81.16s for 72 days work (Farington vol.2, pp.588, 603, vol.3, pp.669, 672). Marchi worked for Lord Holland, telling Farington in July 1796 that he had cleaned and glazed Reynolds's Lady Sarah Bunbury, Lady Susan Fox Strangways and Charles James Fox, which ‘had become almost white'; later the same year he was at Holland House cleaning another picture for Lord Holland and also copying a portrait for him (Farington vol.2, p.593, vol.3, pp.675, 730). The Duchess of Rutland recommended Marchi to the Duke of Beaufort to clean pictures by Joshua Reynolds; a payment to him for cleaning pictures at Badminton dates to 1799 (Farington vol.2, p.588; Gloucestershire Record Office: Badminton Muniments, D2700/RA2/1/21).

Sources: Obituary, Gentleman's Magazine, vol.78, 1808, p.372; Malcolm Cormack, ‘The Ledgers of Joshua Reynolds', Walpole Society, vol.42, 1970, p.107. For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.

Samuel M. Mawson, 3 Carlisle St, London by 1837-1840, 3 Berners St 1840-1859, 29 Soho Square 1859, 13 Bridge Road, St John's Wood 1861-1862. Picture dealer and importer, picture cleaner.

The activities of Samuel Moses Mawson (1793-1862) as a picture dealer have been explored by John Ingamells, to whom this account is indebted. Mawson first comes to attention in 1829 when he sold pictures in Foster's auction room. He sent pictures to a further 32 sales before the end of 1837, but only to 12 sales over the next 18 years. Mawson also sold pictures in Paris in 1844, 1850 and 1853. In 1855 he announced his retirement from business, selling his stock at Christie's. He died in the Marylebone registration district in 1862.

Mawson acted extensively for the collector, Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford, as their correspondence reveals, purchasing works at auction for him from 1848 and arranging his collection in Berkeley Square and at Manchester House, now the Wallace Collection.

Although Mawson called himself a picture cleaner, little is known of his activity in this area. In a letter to Lord Hertford in 1856, he referred to a picture by Greuze as one which he had cleaned many years before for Francis Mills (Ingamells 1981 p.87). What is clear is that Lord Hertford gave Mawson responsibility for commissioning cleaning and lining work for his pictures, as when he wrote in 1854 concerning Murillo's Joseph and his Brethren, ‘As you say it requires lining I leave, with full confidence, what is to be done to your care & kindness & I am certain you will see that it is properly & carefully treated & I hope to find it in charming order.' (Ingamells 1981 p.60, Ingamells 1985 p.393). Mawson used Francis Leedham (qv) to carry out the lining work on this picture. The following year, Hertford wrote to Mawson from Paris, ‘I shall be very thankful if you will have little Jupiter & Leda properly repaired, but it will require a clever man to do it well' (Ingamells 1981 p.70). The correspondence sometimes leaves open the possibility that it was Mawson himself who cleaned certain works, as in 1856 when Hertford wrote concerning two pictures, including Watteau's The Music Lesson (Wallace Collection), ‘I accept with gratitude your offer of cleaning Conway Castle & the Watteau' (Ingamells 1981 p.81, Ingamells 1989 p.373).

In 1850, Mawson apparently cleaned or arranged to have cleaned some pictures in or from the collection of the Marquis de Montcalm, including a Van der Neer Moonlight and Nicolas Poussin's The Birth of Bacchus (Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA; see Ingamells 1981 pp.26-7).

Sources: John Ingamells, The Hertford Mawson Letters: The 4th Marquess of Hertford to his agent Samuel Mawson, 1981, especially pp.13-15. For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.

Henry Merritt, 1 Woburn Buildings, Tottenham Court Road, London by 1851-1861, 34 Foley Place, Great Portland St 1858, Dymoke Lodge, Oval Road, Regents Park c.1864, 24 Langham St 1858-1865, 54 Devonshire St, Portland Place 1865-1877. Picture restorer, art critic and novelist.

Henry Merritt (1822-77) was born in Oxford in poverty, one of nine children of a tailor, Joseph Merritt. He was apprenticed to a framemaker at the age of about 15. He was given free drawing lessons by the painter, William Alfred Delamotte. In 1846 he came to London and worked as a gilder and picture copyist.

Merritt's story has been told from differing viewpoints by two early biographers, in 1879 by his wife of his last year, the American artist, Anna Lea Merritt, and in 1882 by his landlord for many years, George Jacob Holyoake. In addition, in 1865 he himself had published anonymously Robert Dalby and his World of Troubles, a romanticised account of his own early life.

In Holyoake's account, ‘Henry Merritt had some delightful qualities, but he was the most timid, the most irritable and inconsistent of all the children of genius whom I have known'. He recorded that Merritt came to live in his household in about 1847 and continued there nearly 18 years. Merritt was so recorded in the 1851 and 1861 censuses, as a picture restorer, born Oxford, lodging in the Holyoake household at 1 Woburn Buildings, Tottenham Court Road. Holyoake records that Merritt occupied two rooms, one as a studio. Merritt subsequently moved with the Holyoakes to Dymoke Lodge, Oval Road, Regents Park, where he occupied four rooms, the two main ones with folding doors making a spacious studio. It was presumably Merritt who encouraged Manfred Holyoake (qv), Holyoake's son, to become a picture restorer.

Merritt established himself as a picture restorer in 1851 when he began working for Holyoake's friend, Joseph Parrinton, a wealthy collector. Holyoake encouraged Merritt to engage in art criticism, under the pseudonym, Christopher, and in 1854 Merritt published Dirt and Pictures Separated, with a preface by Holyoake, describing the skills of the restorer as well as the techniques of various artists, including Van Dyck and Rembrandt and the restoration of their work, also giving his own thoughts on picture cleaning (The Cabinet of Reason A Library of Freethought, Politics and Culture, Dirt and Pictures Separated In the Works of the Old Masters, Holyoake & Co, 1854, and subsequent editions).

In 1870, when in his late forties, Merritt met the young American painter Anna Massey Lea (1844-1930), who like him had a studio at 54 Devonshire St. He introduced her to Burne-Jones, G.F. Watts and W.P. Frith (Anna Lea Merritt, Memories from 1844 to 1927, typescript, n.d., pp.109, 112-3). He married her on 17 April 1877 but died three months later on 10 July at their home in Devonshire St. In her recollections, published in 1879, Anna Lea Merritt recalled her relationship with Henry Merritt, from first seeing his ‘hospital for pictures' and his tuition to his ‘dear little pupil', as he called her in some of his letters. Subsequently, she produced a portrait etching of her husband in 1878 (example in British Museum) and also painted a memorial to him, Love Locked Out, 1889 (Tate).

Restoration work: Henry Merritt was among the restorers chosen by Richard Redgrave, Surveyor of Royal Collection, to work on the Royal Collection (Millar 1977 p.189). He lined the Boy with a Pipe ('The Shepherd'), attributed to Titian, in 1864 (Shearman 1983 p.253). He restored Louis Laguerre's Marlborough House staircase wall paintings of scenes from the Duke of Marlborough's campaigns (Oxford DNB).

At the National Gallery, Merritt worked from at least 1858 when he restored the background of two pictures, apparently the Quinten Massys Christ and the Virgin, for £2 .2s (see National Gallery Archive, NG13/1/3-4, for this and subsequent payments). He restored three pictures in 1859 for £13.15s including Moretto's Virgin and Child with saints and Thomas Stothard's The Vintage, and the following year he repaired two pictures by William Hilton, now in the Tate Gallery, his Editha Searching for the Body of Harold, which was double lined for the considerable sum of £30.15s and his Sir Calepine Rescuing Serena, which was treated for £16. He cleaned and restored Joshua Reynolds's Lord Heathfield for £33.12s in 1867. Subsequently, he helped remove the discoloured varnish on Cima da Conegliano's The Incredulity of St Thomas in 1870 (Jill Dunkerton, ‘The Transfer of Cima'a The Incredulity of St Thomas', National Gallery Technical Bulletin, vol.9, 1985, p.42) and advised on Piero della Francesca's The Nativity in 1874 (The Times 14 July 1877).

He worked at the National Portrait Gallery between 1859 and his death in 1877 (National Portrait Gallery records, Duplicates of Accounts, vol.1, pp.26-92, see also Walker 1985 p.134), including cleaning and restoring J.S. Copley's full-length Lord Mansfield for £5 in 1864, ‘parquetting & part repairing portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh' for £7.10s in 1865, lining, cleaning and repairing the nose of the Old Pretender for £5 in 1872 (a portrait from the studio of Alexis Simon Belle), repairing the newly acquired Henry VII, formerly attributed to Sittow, in 1876, and putting in order portraits from Sergeants Inn for £11.14s.6d in 1877. He was followed at the Gallery by Frederick Haines (qv) and by John Reeve (qv), who claimed to have undertaken work at the Gallery during Merritt's lifetime, perhaps as a subcontractor.

Merritt had other institutional clients. In London, he was employed at Dulwich College to clean Aelbert Cuyp's A Road near a River in 1864 when the painting was relined by Morrill (qv) (Waterfield 1995 p.52). At Westminster Abbey he was recommended by the painter George Richmond in 1865 to clean the portrait of Richard II, removing overpainting applied by Captain Broome (qv) in the early 18th century (see Merritt's obituary in the Art Journal for a lengthy account). At Sir John Soane's Museum in 1868 and 1870, he cleaned Charles Lock Eastlake's Una delivering the Red Cross Knight from the Cave of Despair, and varnished John Jackson's Sir John Soane in Masonic costume, both in 1868, and cleaned A.W. Callcott's The Passage Point and polished William Hogarth's Election series of four paintings for £3, both in 1870 (information from Hilary Floe and Helen Dorey). According to Anna Lea Merritt he also worked at the Society of Antiquaries and the Garrick Club.

Outside London, at the University Galleries, Oxford, again on the recommendation of George Richmond, he cleaned pictures in 1867 (Royal Academy of Arts Archive, George Richmond papers, GRI/3/382; see also Norman 2009 p.23). At Christ Church, Oxford, he advised in 1869-70 (Byam Shaw 1967 p.13). According to Anna Lea Merritt he also worked at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

An indication of Merritt's reputation comes from Dante Gabriel Rossetti's recommendation of him as a restorer in 1871: ‘a safe person to go to is Mr Merritt, who works a good deal for the National Gallery. His charges... are not low, but not immoderate, and he is really capable' (William Michael Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His Family Letters, 1895, vol.2, p.237). However, two years later Charles Howell told Rossetti, in discussing varnishing a picture, that he thought that Raphael Pinti (qv) was better than Merritt (Cline 1978 no.295).

Merritt's private clients included Rossetti himself, for whom in 1867 he cleaned the 'Botticelli' Smeralda Bandinelli (now Victoria and Albert Museum, see Fredeman 2002, letter 67.51) and the Pre-Raphaelite patron, William Graham, for whom he made recommendations in 1873 on varnishing one of Rossetti's works (Garnett 2000 pp.207, 257, 298). Another early client was William Ewart Gladstone, with whom he was on sufficiently good terms to be invited to breakfast and dinner; he restored a painting at 11 Carlton House Terrace in 1858 for £13.16s, gave advice on works of art and recommended William Agnew to value Gladstone's pictures for auction in 1875 (British Library, Add.MS 44390 ff.11, 111, 44409 f.93, 44415 f.359, 44446 f.329). Merritt is reported to have relined John Constable's Arundel Castle and Mill for Charles Golding Constable in or soon after 1867 (Toledo Museum of Art, see Ian Fleming-Williams and Leslie Parris, The Discovery of Constable, 1984, p.71).

Country house clients included Colonel Lennard in 1864, for whom he cleaned the portrait, Sir Walter Ralegh and his son (National Portrait Gallery, see British Library, Add.MS 81304A f.84), the Duke of Norfolk in 1869 (National Gallery Archive, NGA1/17/10) and Lord Ashburton in 1874 for whom he prepared a list of pictures injured or destroyed by fire at Bath House, Piccadilly (MS catalogues and lists of pictures in Galleries and Private Collections II, 1881, National Portrait Gallery, Scharf Library, D(22)). He ‘renovated' the portrait of the Earl of Surrey attributed to Holbein, one of those shown at the National Portrait Exhibition in 1866 (Manfred Holyoake, The Conservation of Pictures, 1870, p.14).

Sources: Obituaries, The Times 14 July 1877, and Art Journal, vol.16, 1877, pp.309-10; Basil Champneys (ed.), Henry Merritt, Art criticism and romance, with recollections, and 23 etchings by Anna Lea Merritt, vol.1, 1879, pp.1-65; George Jacob Holyoake, Sixty years of an agitator's life, vol.2, 1892, pp.232-47; Frederic Boase, Modern English Biography, vol.2, Truro, 1897, col.854; A.F. Pollard, rev. Suzanne Fagence Cooper, ‘Merritt, Henry (1822-1877)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004 [www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/18610, accessed 28 March 2008]. For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.

Miller, active 1815, picture liner, see William Redmore Bigg

Ministry of Works

Not included here since institutional histories are outside the scope of this directory, but see Barbara Bryant, ‘"Stalwart Young Men": The First Public Picture Conservation Studio', English Heritage Collections Review, vol.3, 2001, pp.128-37. See also the Office of Works.

Henry Mogford, Craven St, Strand, London 1820s?, 10 Tichborne St 1837, 22 Westbourne St, Belgravia by 1841-1851, 104 Denbigh St, Belgravia 1852-1860 or later. Picture dealer, author and antiquary.

Henry Mogford FSA (1787-1874) was christened in 1787 at St Martin-in-the-Fields, one of eight children born to Henry and Sarah Mogford between 1784 and 1805. He married Margaret Otridge in 1816 and they had a daughter Margaret Amelia (b.1819) and a son John (b.1822), both christened at St Martin-in-the-Fields in 1826. The son became a landscape painter. Henry Mogford died at the age of 87 in 1874 at his home in Hounslow. He can be traced in successive censuses, in 1841 at 22 Westbourne St, Belgravia, as in Her Majesty's Record Service, in 1851 at the same address as a teacher of drawing, age 64, with his wife Margaret, age 54, and in 1861 and 1871 as an annuitant.

As a picture dealer in Craven St, according to his obituary in the Art Journal, Mogford, ‘many years ago', campaigned against the trade in fictitious old masters, successfully exposing a source of spurious pictures, located near Richmond Bridge, known to the initiated as the ‘Canaletti Factory'. Henry Mogford, perhaps his father, was listed as a tailor and habit maker at 1 Craven St, Strand in 1822 and was made bankrupt 1824 (London Gazette 9 October 1824).

As an employee of the Record Office, 1835-41, he acted as the workmen's spokesman when petitioning for better pay. It would seem that he was responsible for a very detailed drawing of one of the many decayed Common Plea rolls in 1840. He lost favour and resigned in 1841 following petty complaints about his service (John D. Cantwell, The Public Record Office, 1838-1958, 1991, pp.69-70, 539-40, and pl.3).

As an artist, Henry Mogford made drawings for S.C. Hall's Baronial Halls & Picturesque Edifices of England, 1848. He was friendly with the watercolourist, Thomas Shotter Boys, with whom he corresponded, 1831-54 (Marcia Pointon, The Bonington Circle: English Watercolour and Anglo-French Landscape, 1790-1855, pp.139-42). He exhibited work at the Royal Academy and at the Society of Artists, 1837-46, giving ‘Smart's' at 10 Tichborne St in the 1837 Society of Artists catalogue, suggesting that he was then lodging with the picture restorers, Edward and Henry Smart (qv), or using them as an accommodation address. He was secretary to the Amateur Artists' Gallery at 121 Pall Mall in 1854 (see Pointon, above).

As an authority on picture restoration, his Hand-book for the Preservation of Pictures containing practical instructions for cleaning, lining, repairing, restoring, and preserving Oil Paintings, was published in 1845, going through 14 editions by 1905.

As an agent for Prince Albert, Mogford tried to interest the National Gallery in the Prince Wallerstein collection of early Italian, German and Netherlandish paintings in 1851 (Stanley Weintraub, Uncrowned King: The Life of Prince Albert, 1997, pp.173, 449, see also National Gallery Archive, NG5/88/3 and NG6/2/45).

As an exhibition organiser and manager, Mogford helped organise the fine arts section of the Great Exhibition in 1851. In 1856 he was appointed to manage the fine arts section at Crystal Palace. In this capacity, he was in contact with leading artists (City of Westminster Archives Centre Accession 988/16, 42, 47): Charles Couzens wanted two family portraits belonging to Mrs Ionides of Tulse Hill framed before exhibiting them at the Crystal Palace, George Hayter requested him to send him his picture, Our Saviour after the Temptation, and his son's picture, Roman Charity, while C.R. Leslie wanted his painting, Sancho returned.

As an antiquary, Mogford was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1853. He produced papers on the monuments in Westminster Abbey, 1860.

Sources: Obituary, Art Journal, vol.13, 1874, p.280.

Giuseppe Molteni (1800-67), Milan. Italian artist, academic, museum director and picture restorer.

Not included here since restorers working overseas are outside the scope of this directory, but see Jaynie Anderson, ‘The Controversial Issue of Restoration in Relation to the New Acquisitions', concerning the National Gallery, in The Travel Diaries of Otto Mündler 1855-1858, Walpole Society, vol.51, 1988 (1985 on title page), pp.18-24.

Frederick Moody, 16 Duke St, Holborn, London, then at 53 Cowper St, City Road 1836. Artists' materials manufacturer, map and print colourer, mounter and varnisher.

See British artists’ suppliers on the National Portrait Gallery website.

Frank Morrell & Co by 1910-1911, Frank Morrell 1912-1914, 1917, 1920-1940. At 5 & 6 Portland Mews, Poland St, Soho, London 1910-1914, 1917, 1920-1940. Picture liners.

Frank Morrell was born in 1882 in the St Pancras registration district. As Frank Morrill, he was listed in the 1901 census in the household of his cousin, William Morrill (see below) at 3 Cambridge Gardens, Kensington, as a picture liner, age 18, born St Pancras. Frank Morrell married Emma Breston Dring in the St Pancras registration district in 1908. They had two children, Frank Richard 1910 and David Dring in 1914, both of whom appear to have entered the business. She died age 89 in 1970 (The Times 10 November 1970). In the 1911 census Frank Morrell appears as a picture liner and employer, age 28, born Kentish Town, living in Wembley Hill, with his wife and son, Frank Richard, age one year.

Frank Morrell & Co advertised as ‘Picture Liners, Etc. Panel Work and Transferring a Speciality' in The Year's Art in 1910 and 1911, and as Frank Morrell from 1912 to 1914 but appears to have left off business for much of the First World War. ‘Morell' ironed the surface of Francesco Guardi's Venice: the Grand Canal with the Riva del Vin and Rialto Bridge, 1929 (Wallace Collection, see Ingamells 1985 p.292).

For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.

George Morrill 1857-1865, William Morrill 1866-1899, William Morrill & Son 1900-1961, William Morrill & Son Ltd 1962-1980. At 3 Duck Lane, Wardour St, London 1857-1980, also at 26 Poland St, Oxford St 1865-1871, 5a Railway Place, Ladbroke Grove 1872, 78 Gresham Road NW10 1970. Picture liners, restorers and cleaners.

This is long-lived business specialised in structural work. It was begun by Francis Leedham (qv) in 1827, moving to 3 Duck lane in 1839, where it continued until 1980, in the ownership of George Morrill from 1857, and then in the hands of his son, William Morrill and grandsons.

George Morrill (c.1812-1865) took over the picture lining business of Francis Leedham (qv) in 1857. It is apparent that claims made by the Morrill family that their business had been founded in 1827, as stated on later billheads (e.g. National Portrait Gallery records, Duplicates of Accounts, vol.8, p.101), refer to the establishment of Leedham's business.

The Morrill family has been studied by Lorne Campbell, to whom this account is indebted. George Morrill was born in about 1812 in Trowbridge in Wiltshire according to census records. As a picture liner, son of George Morrill, shearman, he married Harriet King, daughter of James King, shearman, at St John the Evangelist, Westminster on 15 October 1837, when they were both resident at 53 Wardour St (marriage certificate, information from Lorne Campbell). Perhaps George Morrill learnt his trade as an employee of Francis Leedham. He can be found in census records, in 1841 in Meards St, Soho, as a picture liner, with his wife Harriet and in 1861 at 46 Poland St as a picture liner, age 49, born Trowbridge, with wife Harriet, age 43, and son William, picture liner, age 22, for whom see below.

George Morrill died at 26 Poland St, Oxford St, on 15 March 1865. In his will, made 19 April 1859 and proved 29 April 1865, he described himself as a picture liner and left his estate to his wife and son (information from Lorne Campbell). His executors were his friends Francis Leedham and Richard Ambrose Mersh, Buckland, Portsea, gentleman. The will was proved by Leedham, with effects under £300. His widow, Harriet lived on until 1892.

The picture liner, Elijah Morrill (c.1820/3-1894), was probably George Morrill's brother or cousin. In census records he was recorded in 1851, age 31, at 24 Arthur St, St Giles in the Fields, and in 1881, age 61, born Trowbridge, Wiltshire, at 113 Arthur St, Chelsea, always as a picture liner. He died in 1894, age given as 71, in the Fulham registration district.

The Surveyor of the Royal Collection, Richard Redgrave, used Morrill for parquetting and lining pictures (Millar 1977 p.189), a choice which Oliver Millar has described as unfortunate since many of the Hampton Court pictures have been sadly flattened (Millar 1991 p.23). However, Paris Bordone's Virgin and Child with two donors is said to have been relined by Morrill in 1862 with exceptional skill for the period (Shearman 1983 p.56). In 1865, Morrill and Raffaelle Pinti (qv) treated the Giulio Romano workshop Mermaid feeding her young (Shearman 1983 p.131).

‘Morrill the liner', followed by son William (see below), worked extensively for the National Gallery, 1859-95 (Penny 2004 p.xiv). He treated Francesco del Cossa's St Vincent Ferrer and Giovanni Bellini's Madonna of the Meadow in 1859 and lined J.M.W. Turner's London from Greenwich (Tate Gallery) in 1860 (National Gallery Archive, NGA2/3/4/50, NG 13/1/3). He lined and reduced to original size Paris Bordone's Portrait of a Young Woman in 1861, which was then cleaned by Raphael Pinti (qv) (Penny 2008 p.46). For Sir Charles Eastlake personally, George Morrill produced a cradle for the Bouts workshop panel, Virgin and Child with Sts Peter and Paul, which bears his stamp, G MORRILL (National Gallery, see Campbell 1998 p.67).

At the Wallace Collection, he relined two works, both stamped on the stretcher, G MORRILL/ LINER, namely Van Dyck's Philippe Le Roy and Aert van der Neer's Canal Scene by Moonlight (Ingamells 1992 pp.110, n.4, 230, n.2). At Dulwich Picture Gallery, ‘Morrell' relined Aelbert Cuyp's A Road near a River in 1864, when the painting was cleaned by Henry Merritt (qv) (Waterfield 1995 p.52).

At Highclere, he ‘relined with perfect success' Joshua Reynolds's Lady Elizabeth Herbert and her son (Private collection, see Mannings 2000 no.881), ‘having detached the painted surface entirely from the original canvas, to which it had hardly the slightest adhesion' (Leslie 1865 p.377). His stamp can be found on Gainsborough's Karl Friedrich Abel (National Portrait Gallery, see Ingamells 2004 p.2). Thomas Hudson's Dr Isaac Shomberg and James Northcote's Anne King (Huntington Library and Art Gallery, see Asleson 2001 pp.206, 288).

William Morrill (1838-1910), son and successor of George Morrill, was born in 1838 in Soho, and married in 1874 Eliza Ann Jones (1841-1913), daughter of John Christian and Sarah Jones, at All Souls, Marylebone (information from Lorne Campbell). He died at the age of 72 at 3 Cambridge Gardens, North Kensington on 5 December 1910 and his will was proved on 2 February 1911, with effects of almost £1,155 (information from Lorne Campbell).

He can be traced in successive censuses, always as a picture liner. In 1861 at 46 Poland St with his father, George Morrill, in 1871 at 26 Poland St, and thereafter at 3 Cambridge Gardens, Kensington, in 1881 with his wife Eliza, two young sons, George and William, a daughter and his mother Harriett, in 1891 with his wife and mother and son George, age 16, already a picture liner, and in 1901 with his son William J., age 21, a picture restorer, and cousin Frank Morrill, age 18, a picture liner. Both sons became picture liners and restorers, George Elgar Morrill (1875-1964) and William John Morrill (1880-1963), see below, as also his cousin, Frank Morrill (b.1882), see above.

Like his father, William Morrill worked extensively for the National Gallery, mainly on structural work. Among his activities, he transferred five old German pictures from panel to canvas for £53 in 1865 (National Gallery Archive, NG13/1/3), lined the Claude studio Landscape with the Death of Procris, c.1870, and Gaspard Dughet's Tivoli, 1878? (Wine 2001 pp.160, 138), transferred Carlo Crivelli's Annunciation in 1880 (National Gallery Archive, NG7/21/3), cradled Ercole de' Roberti's Last Supper, 1883 (National Gallery Technical Bulletin, vol.10, 1986, p.35, n.1), rejoined and parquetted the panels of Holbein's Ambassadors, 1891 (Martin Wyld, ‘The Restoration History of Holbein's Ambassadors', National Gallery Technical Bulletin, vol.19, 1998, p.9), lined and partially cleaned Jacopo Bassano's The Good Samaritan, c.1891-3 (Penny 2008 p.16), and double lined Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, 1894 (with further work, 1929, 1940, 1941, see Arthur Lucas and Joyce Plesters, ‘Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne', National Gallery Technical Bulletin, vol.2, 1978, p.27).

Morrill also worked for the National Portrait Gallery, including lining Karl Anton Hickel's large House of Commons for £40 in 1887 (when Haines cleaned the picture), and transferring the paint from one canvas to another and triple lining John Partridge's 4th Earl of Aberdeen for £8.10s in 1893 (when Dyer cleaned the picture) (National Portrait Gallery records, Duplicates of Accounts, vol.2, p.128, vol.3, p.66). Hickel's Lord Mendip (National Portrait Gallery, see Ingamells 2004 p.337) is stamped ‘W. Morrill/ Liner'.

At the Wallace Collection, William Morrill relined various pictures, the stretchers stamped W. MORRILL/ LINER or W. MORRILL, including Francois Boucher's Madame de Pompadour, the ‘Canaletto' Venice: the Grand Canal from S.Simeone Piccolo, Joshua Reynolds's Mrs Elizabeth Carnac, Allart van Everdingen's Landscape with Waterfall, Meindert Hobbema's A Wooded Landscape, Willem van de Velde the younger's The Burning of the Andrew after 1871, and Edwin Landseer's Doubtful Crumbs (see Ingamells 1985 pp.112, 146, 256, Ingamells 1989 p.38, Ingamells 1992 pp.117, 155, 386, 418). He also lined Jan Weenix's Dead Game and small birds and his Dead Peacock and Game, c.1872, and cradled Rubens's The Rainbow Landscape, 1895 (Ingamells 1992 pp.312, n.3, 410, n.3).

The Morrill family worked at the University Galleries, Oxford in 1867 (Norman 2009 p.23). Elsewhere, Thomas Creswick's The Windmill (Sudley, Liverpool, see Morris 1996 p.96) bears an incised stretcher mark, W. MORRILL/ Liner.

In 1873, Dante Gabriel Rossetti described ‘Morrill' as ‘skilful and careful' to his friend, Charles Howell, who in turn stated that Morrill had worked for him for years; these remarks arose because Morrill had to redo the lining of Rossetti's Proserpine (Cline 1978 nos 320, 322).

Whistler employed Morrill in 1879 to cut 7 inches off the top of an unidentified full length painting of a boy and to add this strip to the bottom of the painting before relining the work (The Correspondence of James Mcneill Whistler at www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk, see (Biography for: William Morrill).

George Elgar Morrill (1875-1964), elder son and eventual successor of William Morrill, traded as William Morrill and Son from 1900, initially it would seem, with his brother, William John Morrill (see below). He was born in 1875 in Kensington. He was already active as a picture liner at the age of 16, as recorded in the 1891 census. In the 1911 census, he was living in Chiswick, a picture liner (worker), with his wife Edith. He lived latterly at Trevethan, Swangleys Lane, Knebworth, Hertfordshire (this address appears in the 1942). He died on 17 December 1964 and his will was proved on 14 March 1969, with effects of £23,891 (information from Lorne Campbell.

The business described itself as picture liners to the National Gallery from 1912 until 1969, and subsequently as formerly picture liners to the National Gallery. Before the National Gallery's acquisition of Titian's Vendramin Family, Morrill relined the picture in 1928 and Dyer (qv) cleaned and restored it (see Penny 2008 p.210).

The business worked for the National Portrait Gallery from 1919 until 1928 (National Portrait Gallery records, Duplicates of Accounts, vols 8 and 9), including unrolling and restretching some of the largest paintings in the collection in preparation for the reopening of the Gallery after World War One.

The business worked for the Iveagh Trustees on various pictures in the Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood, 1930-51, including lining and repairing Joshua Reynolds's A Fortune Teller, 1930, and lining Thomas Gainsborough's Going to Market, 1931/2 (Bryant 2003 pp.149, 158, 177, 198, 311, 329, 334, 382).

William John Morrill 1913-1957, W.J. Morrill Ltd 1958-1982. At 28-31 Great Pulteney St, London W1 1913, 29 Great Pulteney St 1914-1982. Picture liners, restorers and cleaners.

William John Morrill (1879-1963) was the son of William Morrill and younger brother of George Elgar Morrill (see above). He was born in 1879 in Kensington. He was recorded as a picture restorer, living with his father, age 21 in the 1901 census (see above). He married in Kensington in 1903. In the 1911 census, he was recorded living in North Kensington, a picture restorer (worker), with wife Ada and a daughter. He traded independently from 1913 until 1957 when the business became W.J. Morrill Ltd. He retired to Claygate, Esher, where he died on 20 March 1963. His will was proved 8 May 1963, with effects of £7,941 (information from Lorne Campbell).

For abbreviations, see Resources and bibliography.

Henry John Murcott by 1864-1912, Harry Charles Murcott 1913-1924, H.C. Murcott & Sons 1924-1941, Harry Charles Murcott 1942-1947. At 16 Hanover St, Long Acre, London 1864-1877, Hanover House, 6 Endell St, Long Acre 1878-1935, 28 Store St WC1 1936-1947, emergency wartime address 11 Mercers Road N19 1942-1944. Picture dealers, later frame manufacturers, picture restorers and repairers and mounters of drawings.

For details of Henry John Murcott (c.1836-1910) and his son, Harry Charles Murcott (b.1870), see British picture framemakers on the National Portrait Gallery website. Murcott advertised in The Year's Art 1903, ‘Large or small collections of pictures cleaned, renovated, rehung &c. Paintings lined and restored with artistic skill and care.'

Jim Murrell (1934-1994), conservator of miniatures at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Not included here since outside the scope of this directory, but see his obituary in Conservation News, November 1994. His Archive at the Hamilton Kerr Institute comprises files of reports and slides.

Noticed a mistake? Have some extra information? Who should be added to this directory? Please contact Jacob Simon at jsimon@npg.org.uk.