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Cedric Morris

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© National Portrait Gallery, London

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Cedric Morris

by Cedric Morris
oil on canvas, circa 1930
28 5/8 in. x 19 1/4 in. (727 mm x 489 mm)
Purchased, 1981
Primary Collection
NPG 5407

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

This portraitback to top

Painted around the time that Morris had moved to London and had been elected as a member of the Seven and Five Society and the London Group.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Rideal, Liz, Insights: Self-portraits, 2005, p. 59 Read entry

    Morris left London with his companion Arthur Lett-Haines in 1937. They founded an art school together in Dedham, Suffolk, re-establishing it in Benton End after a fire. The prospectus talked about training ‘sincere’ artists who could work in ‘freedom’: famous alumni include Lucian Freud and Maggi Hambling. The landscape backdrop in this painting is symbolic of Morris’s love of nature. He was a keen breeder of irises and a pioneer of hand-pollination – several species of irises and geraniums still bear his name. The serpentine line of the undulating river echoes his elegant chiselled features.

  • Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 442

Events of 1930back to top

Current affairs

Amy Johnson is the first woman to fly solo to Australia. She flew the 11,000 miles from Croydon to Darwin in a De Havilland Gipsy Moth named Jason and won the Harmon Trophy as well as a CBE for her achievement. She went on to break a number of other flying records, and died while serving in the Air Transport Auxiliary in 1941.

Art and science

Noel Coward's play, Private Lives is first performed. The original run starred Gertrude Lawrence and Laurence Olivier as well as Coward himself. Private Lives became Coward's most enduringly successful play.

International

Gandhi leads the Salt March. The march to the coast was a direct protest against the British monopoly on the sale of salt and inspired hordes of Indians to follow him and adopt his methods of Satyagraha (non-violent resistance to the British rule of India).
Stalin orders the 'liquidation of the kulaks (wealthy farmers) as a class' in a violent attempt to centralise control of agriculture and collectivise farming.

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