Cedric Morris: Artist Plantsman

Fascinating exhibition at the Garden Museum looking at Cedric Morris’s flower pictures and examining what they say about him as a gardener and plantsman.
 
The show was also partly the love story of Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines who he met at an Armistice Day party in 1918. The narrative of the show hung on the houses they lived in and the gardens they created there. I was particularly interested in the later section on their life in Suffolk where they founded the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing where Maggi Hamblin and Lucien Freud, amongst others, studied.
 
The paintings of flowers were bold and colourful and the commentaries described the plants shown in them. I was amused to see that Morris sold his work in Fortnum and Mason’s. I loved the paintings of the art school war time gardens.

Morris was also a well-known plantsman and became known as a creator of Iris hybrids. He was commissioned to illustrate the covers of seed catalogues which were delightful.
 
Closes on 22 July 2018
 
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