Lewis Morley ‘Mammoth’ Prints
Past display archive
25 February - 20 November 2016
Room 32
Free
Joe Orton
by Lewis Morley
1965
NPG P512(16)
Defying easy categorisation, the photographer Lewis Morley (1925–2013) was by turns fashion photographer, portraitist, and documentarian. Although he spent most of his life overseas, growing up in Hong Kong to English and Chinese parents, and emigrating to Australia in 1971, he is perhaps best remembered for the portraits he made of ‘Swinging Sixties’ Londoners.
The National Portrait Gallery mounted a major retrospective of Morley’s work in 1989. In the years that followed, the artist gave the Gallery more than three hundred prints from his archive, most of around 14 x 11 in (356 x 279 mm) or smaller. Just prior to his death, Morley made a series of oversized photographs of some of his most famous works, with the express wish that they be shown at the Gallery. Four are appearing now, according to his wishes, for the first time.
Included in the display are sensational portraits of the brilliant, ill-fated playwright Joe Orton, and two portraits of model Christine Keeler, whose suggestive erotic pose straddling a wooden chair became one of the defining images of the 1960s.
© National Portrait Gallery, London
Related portraits
- Auberon Waugh (NPG x125244)
- Barry Humphries (NPG x125192)
- Timothy Birdsall (NPG x125156)
- Peter Cook (NPG x125261)
- John Campbell Wells (NPG x87360)
- George Hoole as 'Spotty Muldoon' (NPG x38941)
- Barry Fantoni (NPG x38947)
- Paul Foot (NPG x128555)
- The Staff of Private Eye, 1965 (NPG x135520)
- Richard Ingrams; Tony Rushton and two unknown women (NPG x38961)
- Diana Clarke; Barry Fantoni; Willie Rushton (NPG x38948)
- The staff of Private Eye (NPG x135583)
Related sitters
- Amanda Alcock
- Mary Aylmer
- Timothy Birdsall
- Jill Brooke
- Richard Brooks
- Craig Edward Moncrieff Brown
- Diana Clarke
- Peter Edward Cook
- Tristan Davies
- Jan Elson
- Barry Ernest Fantoni
- Sally Farrimond
- Paul Mackintosh Foot
- Nev Fountain (né Steven John Fountain)
- Ian David Hislop
- George Hoole
- Gabby Hughes
- Solomon Hughes
- (John) Barry Humphries
- Richard Reid Ingrams
- Tom Jamieson
- Christine Keeler
- Hilary Lowinger
- Jane Mackenzie
- Adam MacQueen
- Heather Mills
- Tim Minogue
- Sheila Molnar
- Andy Murray
- Nick Newman
- John Kingsley ('Joe') Orton
- Ruth Pallesin-Mustikay
- Chris Powell
- Sue Roccelli
- Tony Rushton
- William George ('Willie') Rushton
- Jean Shrimpton
- Bridget Tisdall
- Megan Trudell
- Peter Usborne
- Michael Wale
- Auberon Alexander Waugh
- John Campbell Wells
- Francis James Baird Wheen