compiled by Jane Stroud
Cedric Morris The Orange Chair, 1944, oil on canvas, 20x25in (51x63.5cm)
A contemporary and friend of Paul Nash, Christopher Wood and Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Cedric Morris was a crucial figure in the British modern tradition. What might be surprising to some, was his reputation as a plantsman. In his garden at Benton End in Suffolk, which he shared with his partner, the artist Arthur Lett-Haines, and from which he ran the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, he cultivated over 90 new varieties of iris. This passion for plants is revealed in an exhibition at The Garden Museum, until July 22, which includes 34 paintings of flowers and plants, many of them not seen in public before. By contrast, Philip Mould & Company presents a concurrent exhibition of landscape paintings made during Morris’s extensive travels between 1908 and 1971, as the artist went in search of new subject matter to paint as well as new species to bring home to plant in his Suffolk garden.