MORRIS, Cedric

1889 - 1982

Cedric Lockwood Morris was born at Sketty, Swansea, Glamorganshire on 11 December 1889, eldest child of wealthy iron merchant, George Lockwood Morris (29 January 1859-23 November 1947), later Sir George Lockwood Morris, 8th Bart., and his wife Wilhelmina Elizabeth Cory (20 May 1864-8 October 1948), third daughter of Thomas Cory (1833-1908) of Sketty, who married at Sketty Church on 5 March 1889. The Morris family rose to prominence in Swansea in the mid-18th century through their success in the copper smelting business. In 1901, 42-year-old George and his 35-year-old wife Elizabeth were living at Cefn Golan Park, Gowerton, Swansea with three children, Cedric, Muriel Emily (1892-1907), Nancy Wilhelmina Lockwood (1893-1988), and kept a governess and four indoor servants, none of the children married. By 1911 they had moved to Ty Maen, South Cornelly, Pyle, Bridgend where Cedric was the only child living at home and was of 'no occupation'. Educated at Charterhouse School after which he worked in Canada and studied singing in London and in 1914 attended Académie Delécluse, Paris but being unfit for active military service, volunteered to train army horses at Lord Rosslyn's stables near Reading, where he met Alfred Munnings. After a time working at Zennor, Cornwall, where he took up painting in watercolour and where, in 1919 he met Arthur Lett-Haines and together they went to Newlyn where Morris learned to paint in oil. In 1921 Morris moved to Paris where he studied at the Académie Moderne, Académie De La Grande Chaumière and Académie Colarossi, his teachers included Andre Lhote (1865-1962) and Fernand Léger (1881-1955) and during these years, Morris, along with Lett and other friends, travelled extensively around Europe and North Africa and visited, among other countries, Italy, Algeria, Tunisia, Spain, and Portugal. He returned to London in 1927 and was elected to the London Group of Artists and the Seven and Five Society of Artists. In the summer of 1930 Cedric and Lett Haines took a lease on Pound Farm, Stratford St Mary, Suffolk and in 1931 he gives his address as Higham Pound. In 1937, together with Arthur Lett Haines, they opened the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing at Dedham, Essex but on 26 July 1939, the school building in Dedham was destroyed by a fire, started accidentally by Lucian Freud, who was smoking inside. Morris and Lett relocated the school to Benton End, a large house on the outskirts of Hadleigh, Suffolk, which also functioned as their home. Benton End became noted not only for its gardens, but for its notable and distinguished students including Lucien Freud (1922-2011) and Glyn Morgan, who was painted by Morris. Although not a member, Morris exhibited at the Ipswich Art Society in 1941 two works, 'Landscape at Higham' and 'Llantony', in 1942 'Yellow Irises' and in 1980 'Fournas, Azores 1966' and was an exhibitor at the Norfolk & Norwich Art Circle in 1946 from Hadleigh, Suffolk and had many solo shows and in 1984 was commemorated in a major exhibition at Tate Gallery. In 1947 he succeeded his father as 9th baronet, but Morris’s eyesight began to fail and in 1975 he gave up painting. In 1978 Lett died and over the next four years Millie Hayes Gomersall, who had moved to the house in 1966, undertook the management of Benton End. On 8 February 1982, plantsman, painter, and traveller Sir Cedric Lockwood Morris, 9th Bart. died at Ipswich at the age of 92. He was succeeded as 10th baronet by Robert Byng Morris (1913-1999).

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Works by This Artist