Month: May 2023

Doris McCarthy-beautiful simplicity.

Doris McCarthy aged 96.

When I first saw the artwork of today’s featured artist, the phrase that first came to mind was “beautiful simplicity”.  I hope you will feel the same when you peruse this blog.  The artist I am showcasing today is Doris McCarthy, a Canadian painter, writer and educator and who is best known for her abstract landscapes.

Doris McCarthy was born on July 7th 1910 in Calgary, Alberta.  She was the youngest child of George Arnold McCarthy, an engineer, and Jennie McCarthy (née Moffatt).  Doris had two older brothers, Kenneth and Douglas. Because of her father’s job the family had to make many house moves.  In the Summer of 1912 the family moved to Vancouver, then Boise, Idaho that December.  The following Spring they lived in Berkeley, California and in the Summer of that year they had re-located to Moncton in New Brunswick, where Doris’ paternal grandparents lived. Finally in the Autumn of 1913, at the age of three, Doris and her family moved to Toronto where she spent her youth living in the east end of the city, in a neighbourhood known as The Beaches, on the shores of Lake Ontario.

Doris’ schooling started when she was five-years-old at which time she was a pupil at Williamson Road Public School in Toronto.  She remained there until she was eleven years of age.  She then transferred to the middle-school of the Malvern Collegiate Institute in 1921.  She remained at the Institute until she graduated in 1926.  As she began to enjoy sketching and painting, whilst attending the Institute, she also enrolled in Saturday Junior courses at the Ontario College of Art (OCA).  She showed such artistic aptitude during her time on these Saturday sessions that she was awarded a full scholarship to the college and started a three-year course in the Autumn of 1926. This was the start of her formal artistic training.

Hills at Dagmar, Ontario by Doris McCarthy (1948)

During her three-year stint at the college, she was mentored by some of the great Canadian artists such as Arthur Lismer, James McDonald and Lauren Harris who were founder members of the Group of Seven, also known as the Algonquin School of landscape painters, a group which was formed in 1920. These Impressionist painters loved to explore the uncharted areas of Canada continually recording through plein air sketches and paintings the beauty of their own country.  It was from their works that other artists realised what was on offer to those who would make the effort to discover the history, culture and geography of their fine nation and question the reasoning behind going to Europe in search of inspirational beautiful scenery.  Doris graduated from the college in 1930 and the following year she began to exhibit her work at the Ontario Society of Artists (OSA).  She was accepted as a member of the OSA in 1945 and later went on to become OSA Vice President from 1961 to 1964 and later, President from 1964 to 1967. 

Village Under Big Hills by Doris McCarthy

Was she influenced by these artistic luminaries?  In an interview in 2004 she cast doubt on that assertion, saying:

“…I don’t think I was ever influenced by the Group of Seven’s actual paintings.  I was influenced very strongly by the tradition of going out into nature and painting what was there. I bought it. And I still buy it…”

Sutton Village, Quebec Province by Doris McCarthy

Whilst at the OCA, Doris met and became great friends with a fellow student, Ethel Curry and the two would often go off together on painting trips together they spent many holidays painting in Haliburton Ontario.  Haliburton, to the north-east of Toronto, was very popular with tourists with its beautiful lakes and old cottages. It was also referred to as the Haliburton Highlands, due to its geographical similarity to the Scottish Highlands.  It was an ideal location for landscape painters such as Doris and Ethel.

Houses on the Neck, Salvage, Newfoundland by Doris McCarthy (1999)

Doris graduated from OCA in 1930 and worked for very low wages at Grip, an advertising agency where many of the Group of Seven had previously been employed. However, her future pathway outside academia was given to her by one of her tutors, Arthur Lismer, who offered her an opportunity to teach children’s art classes at the Art Gallery of Toronto, which she accepted and thus began her career as an educator. Doris also worked part-time as a teacher with Moulton College from 1931 to 1932, and that year enrolled on a twelve-month teacher training course at the Ontario Training College for Technical Teachers in Hamilton during the years 1932 to 1933.

 Asters in the Field at Fool’s Paradise by Doris McCarthy (1953)

In 1932 Doris, aged twenty-two, began teaching art at the Central Technical School in Toronto, and this began her forty-year period of teaching at this institute.  In her forties, Doris McCarthy’s reputation as a landscape painter had blossomed.   She had faithfully kept faith with the Group of Seven’s premise of “going out into nature and painting what was there” and it was on her many painting trips into the Canadian wilderness that she built up her work.  Some of the places she visited looking for inspiration were Haliburton, Muskoka, Georgian Bay, the Badlands of Alberta, and the Arctic. 

Fool’s Paradise

In 1939, whilst on a painting trip along Scarborough Bluffs she came across an abandoned property set high on top of a sheer section of the bluffs and along Gates Gully, a deep ravine at the end of Bellamy Rd.  The property was derelict and covered in poison ivy. However, it was the position looking out over Lake Ontario and other views over the tree-less farmland which appealed to her, and she decided to buy the plot of land.  It cost her $1,250 which was a “fortune” considering her teacher’s salary.  Her mother was horrified with her daughter’s purchase and referred to it as a “fool’s paradise”.  Doris was not deterred by her mother’s negative comments and designed a small single-storey cabin for the developed site.  During the following years she expanded the building and protected it against the harsh winter weather.   The State’s conservation authorities, wary of possible erosion of the land around her cabin, had trees planted around it but left the view of the lake unaffected.  The adjacent land was later subdivided into lots and a residential neighbourhood now surrounds McCarthy’s Fool’s Paradise.

Home – a painting of her home – Fool’s Paradise on the Scarborough Bluffs, Toronto, Canada by Doris McCarthy

Doris ventured further afield when she went on a year-long sabbatical to Europe in 1951 and ten years later another twelve-month sabbatical had her travelling through the Middle East and Asia, visiting far-off places such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Cambodia, just to mention a few.  McCarthy worked in both oils and watercolour and she cultivated a recognisable style of hard-edged angles, form and colour depictions.

Holman Island, Western Artic by Doris McCarthy (1977)

Using primarily thick oils and watercolours, McCarthy developed a style, often verging on abstraction, that was consistently praised for its vitality, boldness and skillful explorations of hard-edged angles, form and colour. In 1972, at the age of sixty-two, she retired from the Central Technical School.  She was interviewed by a journalist from the Huffington Post as to her life in retirement and she said:

“…When I retired from teaching, I thought that the next major event of my life would be dying.  There was no imagining that the best years were still ahead of me…”

For Doris McCarthy, retirement did not mean slowing down, for the following year after she retired, she enrolled at the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus as a part-time student. Sixteen years later, at the age of seventy-nine she was awarded an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Literature on June 6th, 1989.

Iceberg Fantasy by Doris McCarthy

Dennis Reid is the author of The Concise History of Canadian Painting, which is considered the definitive volume on Canadian art.  He was also a curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario for over 30 years.  In his book of Canadian art he wrote about Doris McCarthy:

“…Following her retirement in 1972 from [teaching at] Central Technical School, Toronto, she began exhibiting commercially on a more regular basis, not just in Toronto but in Ottawa, Calgary and later Winnipeg, showing work that some saw as a fresh take on the Canadian landscape tradition. She made the first of a number of trips to the Arctic in 1972, and that encouraged greater boldness with light, colour and pattern, and in 1977 she began painting larger canvases that emphasized this confident command of formal issues even more.  She began showing with Aggregation Gallery in Toronto in 1979 (which became Wynick/Tuck Galley in 1982), and her subsequent regular showings there assured close critical attention to both the work of the half century already accomplished and the new, always fresh work that continued through the nineties and beyond…”

McCarthy painting at Grise Fjord, Nunavut 1976

Nunavut is the vast territory of northern Canada that stretches across most of the Canadian Arctic. It was created in 1999 out of the eastern portion of the Northwest Territories, Nunavut encompasses the traditional lands of the Inuit, the indigenous peoples of Arctic Canada.  Its name means “Our Land” in Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit. The capital is Iqaluit, at the head of Frobisher Bay on southern Baffin Island.

Doris McCarthy, besides painting numerous works, also wrote three autobiographies during various times in her life.  In 1990 she wrote A Fool in Paradise a fascinating memoir of her early years. It describes the fortunes of an artist who was striving to establish herself in the art world of the thirties and forties and the journey made by a spirited girl searching for her own path to fulfilment. Against the backdrop of those early years, Doris writes of studying art in pre-war London, winning a teaching position in the depths of the Depression and roughing it on painting expeditions to northern Ontario, the Maritimes and the Rockies. She reveals stories of her personal life: of breaking loose from a disapproving mother, building her own home on the bluffs above Lake Ontario, and of finding love in unexpected places.

Her second autobiography entitled The Good Wine: An Artist Comes of Age describes her life from 1950 to 1991. It tells of the time at the age of forty, she broke free of her teaching responsibilities to take a year’s sabbatical in Europe as a full-time painter. It was to be the first of many adventures around the world which included a solitary round-the- world odyssey from Japan to Australia, India to the Middle East. She also discovered the Arctic and in 1991, Antarctica, drawing inspiration for her art and her life in the far-flung corners she visited and in the beloved landscape of her own country.  It recounts her meetings with Dorothy Sayers and Arnold Toynbee, and all the controversies associated with the fledgling Canadian art community.

In 2004, at the age of 94, Doris McCarthy published her third and final autobiography.  In this final autobiography, Ninety Years Wise, she focuses on her 92nd summer and she tells of the summer ritual of heading to her summer home, her cottage on Georgian Bay, painting and entertaining friends.

During her long life, Doris McCarthy received many awards.  She was the recipient of the Order of Ontario, the Order of Canada, honorary degrees from the University of Calgary, the University of Toronto, Trent University, the University of Alberta, and Nipissing University, an honorary fellowship from the Ontario College of Art and Design and also had a gallery named in her honour on the Scarborough campus at the University of Toronto. 

Doris McCarthy died at her Fool’s Paradise home on November 25, 2010, aged 100. She is buried at Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Her Fool’s Paradise property now functions as an artist’s residence, the Doris McCarthy Artist-in-Residence Centre, and is in part funded by the Ontario Heritage Trust.

Some of the information for this blog came from the following websites:

The Life of Doris McCarthy. University of Toronto

https://doris.digital.utsc.utoronto.ca/content/life-doris-mccarthy

American Women Artists

https://americanwomenartists.org/rediscovered-women-artists-doris-mccarthy/

Fool’s Paradise Guided Tour

Doris McCarthy Gallery – Fool’s Paradise Guided Tour (utoronto.ca)

The Knip Dynasty of Artists

(Left click on family tree for larger view)

Nicolaas Frederik Knip (1741-1808)

A Stone Urn with Flowers and Fruit by Nicolaas Frederik Knip

In this blog I am looking at the Knip family, a Dutch artistic dynasty, a multi-generation of talented painters. To begin this journey I go back to February 12th, 1741 and the birth of Nicolaas Frederik Knip in the Dutch town of Nijmegen, which lies close to the German border. During the first thirty years of his life, he earned money for his family as a travelling painter picking up commissions on his journeys.  His favoured genre was painting wallpapers for large residences, painting advertising signs for inns and various businesses.  In 1774, a year after moving to Tilburg, he married Anna Elisabeth Drexler the daughter of Matthijs Drexler, the keeper of Tilburg Castle. The couple went on to have five children, four of who, like their father, became well-known artists. They were Josephus Augustus Knip, Mattheus Derk Knip, Henriëtta Geertrui Knip and Frederik Willem Knip. After his marriage, Nicolaas Knip started painting floral still lifes and landscapes.

Saint Nicholas as Patron of the Butchers’ Guild (1789)

In 1787 Nicolaas Knip moved to Den Bosch and two years later, he collaborated with the Dutch painter Quirinus van Amelsfoort on the large painting (220 x 530 cms) commemorating the fourth century saint, St Nicholas of Myra as the Patron of the Butchers’ Guild.  We see the bishop in the centre of the work holding out his hands to three children. At the top right are some angels who have alerted the saint to the incident.   The depiction refers to the legend that through his fervent prayer the saint brings to life the children and is a reminder of the gruesome tale which tells of three children who, at the time of a famine, were cut into pieces by a butcher and pickled in a barrel.  It now hangs in the Den Bosch town hall. For the last 12 years of his life, Knip was completely blind. He died in Den Bosch in 1808.

Josephus Augustus Knip (1787-1847)

The Shelling of ‘s-Hertogenbosch during the French Revolutionary Wars  by Josephus Augustus Knip (1800)

Josephus Augustus Knip was the eldest child of Nicolaas and Anna Knip (née Drexler).  He was baptized on August 3rd 1777.  In 1788, when he was eleven years old, he moved with his family to ‘s-Hertogenbosch. His father was his first art tutor.   Unfortunately when his father’s eyesight deteriorated and eventually became blind in 1796, Josephus had to take on the role as breadwinner.  In 1801 at the age of twenty-four, he built up a reputation as a landscape artist in Paris, where he accepted commissions for topographical landscape works. He spent nine years in Paris during which time he became drawing master to Napoleon III of France. Josephus left Paris at the end of 1809 and travelled to Italy and based himself in Rome for three years. 

The Gulf of Naples with the Island of Ischia and the Epomeo Volcano in the Background by Josephus Augustus Knip (1818)

During those three years he made many painting depicting Naples, the Sabine Hills, the Alban Hills, and the Campagna.  He was greatly influenced by the panoramic landscapes he saw during his travels. He made numerous detailed sketches which he would later convert into beautiful watercolour and oil paintings. One such work from his days in Italy is his 1818 work entitled The Gulf of Naples, with the Island of Ischia and the Epomeo volcano in the background. Also depicted are the Roman monuments. You can see the ruins of the Colosseum on the left, the aqueduct of Nero and the monastery church Quattro Coronati. In 1813, Josephus went back to his Dutch homeland with his wife, the painter Pauline Rifer de Courcelles, whom he had married in 1808. He settled in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, where he set up his studio. Later he lived in Amsterdam. His career was cut short in the late 1820s when he lost the sight of one eye. By 1832 he was completely blind. He died at the end of September 1847, aged 70.

Illustration by Pauline Rifer De Courcelles femme Knip for the book, Les Pigeons.

There is some doubt as to Henriëtte’s mother, as at the time of her birth in 1821, Josephus and Pauline were living apart, their marriage had been a disaster as they were such different characters and incompatible.  Josephus was then living with his mistress, Cornelia van Leeuwen, who is credited with being Henriëtte’s mother. In 1824, when Henriëtte was three years old, Pauline and Josephus divorced and thereafter she signed her pictures ‘Pauline De Courcelles femme Knip’. 

De Courcelles’s earliest paintings featured American birds and later she provided illustrations of pigeons for the book Histoire Naturelle des Pigeons, written by the Dutch ornithologist Coenraad Temminck. The backstory to this publication is filled with intrigue as in 1811 when she had finished one volume of pigeons, she published it straight away, much to the annoyance of Temminck who did not publish his own three-volume work until 1813-15. He stated with much anger that she had rushed in and ‘stolen’ his text on pigeons of the world and published it with her illustrations before he had completed his 3-volume set.

Henrietta Geertrui Knip (1783-1842)

Henriëtta Geertrui Knip was born in Tilburg on July 19th 1783.  She was the second-born child of Nicolaas and Anna Knip.  Initially she was tutored in painting by her father, Nicolaas but when he began to go blind she turned to her older brother Josephus for artistic advice.  In April 1801 when Josephus went to Paris she accompanied him.  She had always been interested in floral paintings and so, on arriving in Paris, she took lessons from the Dutch flower painter Gerard van Spaendonck, who had been living and working in Paris since 1769.

Flowers in a Vase by Henriëtta Geertrui Knip (1830)

Once she had completed her studies she returned to The Netherlands where she spent the summers in Haarlem and was employed by various flower companies to illustrate their adverts and brochures.  During the harsh winters and out of the flower growing season she returned to Amsterdam where she taught ladies how to paint.

Floral Bouquet by Henriëtta Geertrui Knip (1834)

She eventually returned to the French capital in 1824 and studied under Jan Frans van Dael, a Flemish painter and lithographer who specialised in floral painting and still lifes featuring various fruits.  She remained close to her older brother and when he suffered from blindness and had to give up painting, Henriette was able to step in and support him and his family.  Henriëtta Geertrui Knip died in Haarlem on May 29th 1842, aged 58.

Mattheus Derk Knip (1785-1845)

Dr. P.J. de Willebois with His Family at the Rhine in Germany by Mattheus Knip (c.1823)

Mattheus Derk Knip, the second son of Nicolaas Frederik Knip and his wife Anna, was born on December 30th 1785 in Tilburg.  Little is known about his early years but, like his sister Henrietta, it is believed that he received his first art tuition from his father and later from his elder brother Josephus.  It is thought that he also studied under the Brabant brothers, Gerard van Spaendonck and his brother Cornelis van Spaendonck who were renowned floral painters. At the time, there were no leading flower painters in Paris and so the brothers were able to make a name for themselves with their favoured genre.  King Louis XVI appointed Gerard to the role of royal miniature flower painter.

View of Oirschot and St Petrus Church by Mattheus Knip

When his siblings, Josephus, Mattheus and Henriette moved to Paris in 1801 he went with them and remained in the French capital until 1806.  On returning to the Netherlands he set up home in Vught and then Den Bosch in the North Brabant, a province in the south of the Netherlands.  Mattheus would go on to paint many Brabant landscapes. Mattheus rarely signed his work which made the attribution of his work difficult. Mattheus Knip married twice. His first marriage in 1810 was to Elisabeth Ubens and they had a son, Henri Knip, who also became a painter. Mattheus married a second time in 1822.  His second wife was Cornelia Adriana van Hoften.  He died in Vught on April 24th 1845, aged 59.

Hendrikus Johannes “Henri” Knip (1819-1897)

Self portrait by Henri Knip

Henri Knip, the son of Mattheus and Elisabeth Knip, was the youngest member of the family of artists.  He was born in den Bosch on April 20th 1819.  It is thought that during his career , around 1833, he travelled to Italy and Switzerland accompanied by his father, Mattheus Derk Knip. The long painting trip through the mountainous regions of those countries were captured on canvas and resulted in half of his work such beautiful scenes.   As well as using his sketches from his painting trip to aid his finished oil paintings he also made use of topographical lithographs which were circulating at that time.  Other of Henri’s works depicted village scenes and buildings, including churches, castles and country estates.

A Mountainous Landscape by Henri Knip

In 1854, Henri was living in Amsterdam but two years later he took up residency in Brussels and in the latter years of his life he lived Schaerbeek where he died in 1897, aged 78.   Henri had been married to Louisa Henriëtte Victoire Verassel.

Henrietta Ronner-Knip (1783-1842)

Henriette Ronner-Knip

Henriëtte Ronner-Knip, named after her aunt, was born in Amsterdam on May 31st 1821, the younger of two children of Josephus Augustus Knip and Cornelia van Leeuwen.  She had one brother, August, who was almost two years older than her.   Henriette’s parents were not married at the time of Henriette’s birth as her father was still officially married to his French animal painter wife, Antoinette Pauline Jacqueline Rifer de Courcelles. 

Katjesspel (The Kitten Game) by Henriette Ronner-Knip

Her father, despite his failing eyesight, tutored both her and her brother in the techniques of painting. In 1833, after a short stay in The Hague, the Knip family moved to Beek before returning to ‘s-Hertogenbosch.  When she was twenty years old, she and the family took up residence in the nearby village of Berlicum in North Brabant, close to the River Aa.  Once her father had to give up painting because he was going blind, Henriette took on the task of looking after the household and providing for the family.

A Kitten Playing by Henriette Ronner-Knip

On the death of her parents, her father Josephus in 1847, and her mother Cornelia in 1848, she left Berlicum and went to Amsterdam where she joined, and was the first female member, of the Arti et Amicitae Society (For Art and Friendship).   The Society played a key role in the Netherlands art scene and in particular in the Amsterdam art schools. It is still a focal point for artists and art lovers in the city of Amsterdam.

Cart Dog at Rest by Henriette Ronner-Knip

Henriette began painting local landscapes of North Brabant.  Often she would sketch scenes using pencil and watercolours but soon began to paint using oils.  The breakthrough for her was when she and her brother August were commissioned in 1835 to produce a painting featuring the Tilburg farm owned by the Dutch ruler, Prince of Orange.  A year later many of her paintings depicting North Brabant scenes were exhibited at various salons.

Mother and Kittens playing by Henriette Ronner-Knip

In 1850 she married Feico Ronner and moved with him to Belgium, living first at Rue de la Régence 7, in the north-east suburb of the Belgium capital, Saint-Josse-ten-Noode,  much later, in 1878, they settled in the Brussels suburb of Elsene.   Feico acted as Henriette’s business manager looking after money matters and the correspondence.  It was when she moved to Brussels that her painting genre changed from landscapes and village scenes and focused on depictions of dogs and then latterly, around 1870,  her paintings incorporating cats which was probably what she was best remembered for.

The Musicians by Henriette Ronner-Knip

She exhibited her work at many exhibitions and received many awards. In 1887, she was awarded the Order of Leopold and, in 1901, became a member of the Order of Orange-Nassau.  Feico and Henriette had three children, a son Alfred and two daughters, Allice and Emma who all became artists and Henriette would often show her work along that of her children.   Henriette Ronner-Knip died at Ixelles, Belgium on February 28th 1909, aged 87.

Augustus Knip (1819-1859)

Brother of Henriette Ronner-Knip.

Spring in the Sheep-pen by Augustus Knipp

Henriëtte’s elder brother Augustus who was born in 1819 and, like his sister, was also tutored by his father and later became a successful artist, who, at the age of sixteen, was commissioned with his sister, to paint farmyard scenes at King Willem II’s farm. His speciality was the depiction of farm animals often portrayed in indoor settings.

Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merprès.

This blog is the second one requested by Barbara Matthias, a reader of my blogs, who had actually met the artist, and, like the previous one about Rudolf Bonnet, it is about the life and artwork of a painter who spent the latter half  of his life on the Indonesian island of Bali.  Let me introduce you to Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merprès, a self-declared impressionist.

City view with boats in the canal by Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merprès

Le Mayeur was born on February 9th 1880 in Ixelles, a municipality of Brussels which lies to the south-east of the Belgium capital.  He was the youngest of two brothers born to Andrien Le Mayeur De Merpres, a marine artist, and his wife Louise Di Bosch. During his early years Jean studied painting with the French artist, Ernest Blanc-Garin as well as being tutored by his father.  His father wanted his son to receive an all-round education and had him enrol at the Polytechnic College of The Université Libre de Bruxeles, where he studied Architecture and Civil Engineering.  However much to the horror of his family, Jean decided to forego all that he had learnt at the polytechnic and pursue his love of painting and his favoured genre of landscape painting in the Impressionistic style, depicting Belgian landscapes in hazy hues.

Tahitian Women on the Beach Gaugin’s Tahitian painting (1891)

In 1914, now in his thirties, with the outbreak in Europe of the Great War, Jean was enlisted as a war-time painter and photographer.  During the conflict he was affectedly badly by the carnage of the war and this could have been one of the reasons why he decided to leave Western “civilisation” and find solace in the exotic worlds which he had seen in the works of the French post-impressionist artist Paul Gauguin.

 Two Women on the Beach, Tahiti, by Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merprès

Jean had also acquired an insatiable appetite for travel.   In the early 1920s he visited Italy, North Africa, India, Cambodia, Burma, Madagascar and Turkey, all the time transferring his thoughts and what he saw onto canvas.  In a way these extensive travels were Jean’s way of searching for paradise and like Paul Gaugin, who had visited the Pacific island of Tahiti in June 1891, he too arrived on the Pacific island in 1929.  Jean Le Mayeur was disappointed with Tahiti as it was now far more commercialised than it was in Gaugin’s day and so Jean discounted Tahiti as being the promised land and instead decide to travel to south-east Asia and in 1932 he embarked on his first voyage to the “island of the Gods”, Bali.

An Arab Market by Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merprès

After a long sea passage,   Le Majeur arrived at Singaraja, a port town in northern Bali.  From there he travelled south and rented a house in Banjar Kelandis, close to the northern part of Denpasar, the island’s main town. He was captivated by the Balinese people’s traditional way of life, the temple ceremonies and the local dances such as Legong, which is a form of Balinese dance that is characterized by intricate finger movements, complicated footwork, and expressive gestures and facial expressions.  For Le Mayeur, Bali was an ideal place to paint because of its light, colour and the exquisiteness of the surroundings in what was still a quite an unspoilt island.

Harbour of St Tropez by Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merprès

From his love of watching the Legong dancers Le Majeur met a beautiful fifteen-year-old Legong performer, Ni Nyoman Pollok and he persuaded her to model for his paintings. In 1933 he had put together a collection of work featuring Ni Pollok, which he took to Singapore for an exhibition.  The exhibition was a great success and it resulted in him being more widely known.  On returning from Singapore, Le Mayeur purchased a plot of land at Sanur beach, a coastal stretch east of Denpasar in southeast Bali.  There, he built a house, which was also his studio and a beautiful garden. It was here that Ni Pollok along with her two friends worked every day as his models.

Three Dancers in the Garden by Le Mayeur by Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merprès

In his painting entitled Three Dancers in the Garden we see three graceful dancers.  The setting of the depiction is in the garden in front of the house Le Mayeur and his wife Ni Pollok built on the beach of Sanur. Almost the whole of the background is taken up by the white house with its thatched roof and blue and white window shutters. 

Their house at Sanur was depicted on a number of occasions by Le Mayeur.  In one of his letters to a friend he recounts his love for the property:

“…I’ve evidently made all things serviceable to my art. All my actions have but one purpose: facilitating my work…”

 In another, he talks about how he is inspired by the house:

“…you will understand my paintings wherever you may see them, for everything in this little paradise which I created for myself was made to be painted”…”

Again, in yet another letter he writes about his love for the garden:

“…I organized my home exactly as I liked it. I intended to surround myself with nothing but beauty.  I planted a mass of bougainvillea, frangipani, hibiscus and all around the cottage I put groups of intertwining plants. I built little temples, completely made of white coral, dug little ponds in which the reflections of all the Gods of Hindu mythology can be seen among the sacred lotus flowers. The two temples are surrounded by approximately two hundred of these little sculptures, which have integrated with the flowers whose silhouettes are drawn on the purple and pink tropic skies…”

Le Mayeur and Ni Pollok

It is fair to say that Le Mayeur was smitten by the beauty of the island and the beauty of Ni Pollok. His original intention had been that he would just stay on the island for eight months but as that time came to an end he took the decision to remain in Bali for the rest of his life. After three years working together, in 1935, Le Mayeur and Ni Pollok got married. Le Mayeur kept on painting with his wife and her friends as his models during their married life. During the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies in 1942, Le Mayeur was put under house arrest by the Japanese authorities.

Around the Lotus Pond by Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merprès

Many of Le Mayeur’s paintings depicted scenes in and around their house.  The subjects were varied such as women at leisure on a daybed in the interior of the house; women weavers at the loom; women on the veranda or women dancing on a terrace; women in front of the house or in the garden picking flowers or making offerings but one of his favourite depictions was of women dancing around the lotus pond in his garden.  In this painting, Around the Lotus Pond, which Le Mayeur completed in the 1950s, we see the pond around which are six young women picking flowers.  It is thought that Ni Pollock posed for all the women.  Le Mayeur strived to make his paintings colourful and in this work the hues of red, purple, orange and pink dominate the painting and are in contrast with the darker colour of the pond and its water which we see in the lower left of the picture.

Ni Pollok with a friend enjoying the Afternoon Sun

by Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merprès

During the war, tourism had totally disappeared but at the cessation of hostilities tourism to the island slowly returned.  The island’s tourists would often visit and look around Le Mayeur’s home and studio in Sanur and took the opportunity to buy his artwork.   Returning home with their purchasers enabled Le Mayeur’s works of art to become part of many collections. Although Bali was undoubtedly a scenic paradise, one of the downsides of living on the island was the possibility of contracting malaria and le Mayeur often suffered from bouts of the disease which weakened him.  A riding accident in 1948, resulted in the then sixty-eight years old artist to suffer a broken leg from a fall from his horse, Gypsy, and after that incident, probably because of his age, he never ever really recovered and had always, from then on, to use a cane when walking.  In 1951 the aging artist was attacked by a group of robbers and thanks to the effort of his wife Ni Pollok, they managed to fight off the intruders.  However Le Majeur received a large stab wound in the shoulder during the attack. Five years later he suffered with a hernia. Despite all these negative happenings, Le Mayeur managed to keep focused on his work and maybe the highly colourful works he produced radiated the sunny side of his and Ni Pollok’s life.

Five women on the Beach by Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merprès

In 1958, seventy-year-old Le Mayeur had to travel to Brussels with his wife for treatment for cancer of his ear. Sadly, the illness was diagnosed as being terminal and the painter died on May 31st, 1958, aged 78. and was buried in Ixelles, Brussels. Ni Pollok later married an Italian physician who was living on the island but like many foreigners, during the troubles in Indonesia, he had his residence permit revoked and was obliged to leave the country. Ni Pollok stayed behind on Bali.

A room in Le Mayeur’s house, now a museum, in Sanur

The will of Le Mayeur had stated that Ni Pollok was allowed to live in the house in Sanur and she resided there up to her death in 1985. Subsequently, the house and its contents, including a hundred paintings by Le Mayeur, were then donated to the Indonesian government and the house was converted into a museum.

Johan Rudolf Bonnet

Rudolf Bonnet

My next two blogs were requested by a reader of my site and so I always try and fulfil requests, here is the first one.

Today I am looking at the life and work of the Dutch painter Johan Rudolf Bonnet.  He was born in Amsterdam on March 30th 1895, although, as we will see, he spent most of his life in the town of Ubud on the Indonesian island of Bali.  He was one of the most individualistic artists who travelled and painted in the Dutch East Indies during the first half of the 20th century and he stood head and shoulders above his fellow European artists who visited the island of Bali.  It was during his journeys away from his homeland to the East Indies which saw his artistic talent blossom.

Anticoli Corrado

Rudolf’s father was, Jean Bonnet Jr. and his mother was Elisabeth Elsina Mann, and both were of Huguenot descent, and were bakers. After normal Primary schooling he received artistic education at a technical High School where he studied decorative painting.  He also attended evening classes at the Rijksacademie van Beeldende Kunsten. In 1920, when he was twenty-five, Rudolf Bonnet along with his parents took a vacation to Italy.  Rudolf loved the area south of Rome known as Anticoli Corrado.  The town was the home of an artists’ colony and many of the young inhabitants would pose as models for the this thriving artistic community.  Rudolf remained in Italy for eight years.

Portrait of Wijnand Otto Jan Nieuwenkamp by Nico Jungmann (1909)

It was during his latter years in Italy that Rudolf met Wijnand Otto Jan Nieuwenkamp, the first European artist to visit Bali, and who significantly influenced the island’s art and culture, making it better known in the wider world, and who had made numerous illustrations of Balinese culture. Nieuwenkamp shared with Bonnet this love for the Dutch East Indies and Bonnet knew he had to visit this “wonderous” place.

Self portrait by Rudolf Bonnet (1927)

In 1927, a year before leaving for the Dutch East Indies, Bonnet, aged thirty-two, completed a self-portrait.  It is a stunningly meditative depiction of the artist at a time in his life when he was struggling to find inspiration and motivation outside his safe and comfortable European lifestyle.   The painting was completed at a time in the artist’s life when he had begun to yearn for inspiration and an experience outside the comforts of European living. The artist surveys us out of the corner of his eye. It is a self-portrait which does not hide his physical facial gauntness and the receding hairline which cannot disguise his premature ageing.  Bonnet, in this portrait, has honestly revealed himself to us. 

Village Street by Walter Spies (1929)

Soon after arriving on the island Bonnet met the German  artist Walter Spies, who had come to the Dutch East Indies in 1923 and settled in Bali four years later in the town of Ubud.  Nine years later Spies moved out of the town and built himself a mountain retreat in Iseh.   Rudolf Bonnet took over Spies’ house in Ubud where he set up his own studio.

Dewa Poetoe by Rudolf Bonnet (1947)

The sitter for the above artwork is Dewa Putu Bedil, one of the youngest members of the Pita Maha movement who had received instruction and encouragement from Bonnet in developing his own artistic style. Bonnet had a close personal relationship with, Dewa Poetoe and this work is an outstanding study of expression, and highlights the artist’s mastery of portraiture.

I Tjemul by Randolf Bonnet (1949)

Bonnet soon came across traditional Balinese art but soon he began to witness a change in it as local painters came in contact with the tourists who were visiting the island and soon they picked up on their concepts of art.  It was not long before Bonnet immersed himself in issues affecting the local community such as healthcare and education and he became involved in setting up the Pita Maha movement.  Pita Maha literally means “Great Shining” and was founded in 1934 as an association for artists in Bali and it had two main goals; firstly to develop, improve and preserve the quality of Balinese art objects by setting up weekly inspections and secondly to encourage the selling of high-quality art by coordinating sales exhibitions outside Bali.  Bonnet believed the association would inspire local artists to raise their artistic standards.

Two Balinese Men by Rudolf Bonnet (1956)

Two Balinese Men by Rudolf Bonnet (1954)

During his time in Italy, Bonnet had fell in love with the Italian Renaissance masters and in particular their portraiture.  It was this that influenced him when he set about portraying the indigenous people living in the colonial Dutch East indies and he knew they faced many hardships during their lifetime in what was an ever-changing modernising of the twentieth century.  Hoisted on their bare shoulders are tools of their manual trade Rudolf portrays the unpretentiousness of their daily existence and in a way has depicted them in the highest benchmarks of classical beauty.

Portrait of J. Djemul by Rudolf Bonnet (1949)

Bonnet’s arrival on Bali in 1929 was followed by an influx of Europeans all who wanted to learn about and record the lives of the Balinese people.    During the 1930s, Bali became home to the anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, musicologist Colin McPhee, and the artists Miguel Covarrubias and Walter Spies.  All these people helped glamorize and make popular the image of Bali itself and its inhabitants.  Through words and paintings, they, like Bonnet presented Bali as an extraordinary place of unspoilt beauty.  McPhee, made a musicological study of Bali, and in his book A House in Bali, described the island as “an enchanted land of aesthetes at peace with themselves and nature”, while Miguel Covarrubias, the Mexican painter, caricaturist, illustrator, ethnologist and art historian,  on his honeymoon in Bali with his wife Rosa, wrote an ethnographic book, Isle of Bali, which became a literary sensation in the West, lauded for the detailed sketches of Balinese women, dancers and scenery that Covarrubias had made in the field.

“Ni Radji” Bali by Rudolf Bonnet (1954)

The Balinese idyll for Bonnet came crashing down with the arrival of the Japanese army in February 1942.  Bonnet remained at liberty until later that year when he was arrested and sent to Sulawesi, where he remained a prisoner of war  in internment camps in Pare-Pare, Bolong and Makassar for the remainder of the conflict. 

Rudolf Bonnet standing in front of his house in the 1950s

When the war ended and he was released from internment and Bonnet returned to Bali where he built his house and studio in Campuan. More trouble was to rear its ugly head with the deterioration in the relationship between the Republic of Indonesia and the “motherland”, The Netherlands. 

(Dua orang gadis) Double portrait of Ni Radji by Rudolf Bonnet.

However Bonnet was able to stay due to his close relationship with President Sukarno who, as an art lover, had collected fourteen of Bonnet’s works. His relationship with Sukrano soured in 1957 after a dispute regarding Bonnet’s painting entitled (Dua orang gadis) Double portrait of Ni Radji. Both Bonnet and President Sukarno loved the painting and Bonnet wanted to keep the work for himself and refused to sell it.  For Bonnet, it was  a means of remembering the young woman who had modelled for him but had left Ubud after her marriage.   However Bonnet was pressurised by the President and had to sell the painting to Sukarno and after the acrimonious dispute Bonnet was forced to leave Indonesia in 1958. He only returned for short visits to his beloved Bali fifteen years later.

Rudolf Bonnet died in the Dutch town of Laren on April 18th 1978, aged 83.  He was cremated and his ashes were taken to Bali by his niece Hilly de Roever-Bonnet, where they were re-cremated.

Cedric Morris

Self portrait by Cedric Morris (1919)

Cedric Lockwood Morris was born on December 11th 1889 at Matcham Lodge, Sketty, Swansea.  He was the first-born child of George Lockwood Morris, an industrialist, iron founder and prominent rugby player who had played for Wales and his wife Wilhelmina (née Cory).  Both of Cedric’s mother and father hailed from well-to-do families who owned industrial businesses. Cedric had two sisters, Muriel who died in her teens and Nancy who was four years his junior. In 1947, when Cedric’s father, George, was eighty-eight, he succeeded to the baronetcy which had been created for his great grandfather. Sir John Morris, a copper and coal magnate.  This prestigious event came three months before he died and the baronetcy passed on to fifty-eight-year-old Cedric Morris, who became the 9th Baronet in November 1947. 

Cedric was sent away to St Cyprian’s School, Eastbourne, an English preparatory boarding school for boys, which trained pupils to proceed to leading public schools, and so providing a taster to boarding school life.  From here Cedric, aged thirteen, was enrolled at Charterhouse, an English public school.  He achieved very little academically at these schools and sat the examinations to enter the army, which he failed. In 1907, aged seventeen, Cedric, at his mother’s suggestion, travelled to Canada to work on a farm in Ontario.  That did not suit him and after a number of menial low-paid jobs he returned to Wales.  He briefly studied music at the Royal College of Music where he hoped to become a singer but again he failed in that venture.  In April 1914, at the age of twenty-four, he travelled to Paris and enrolled at the Académie Delacluse in the Montparnasse district of the French capital.  His stay in Paris was curtailed due to the outbreak of the First World War and he returned to England and joined the Artists’ Rifles, an active-duty volunteer reserve force of the British Army.  Many of those who joined were artists, actors, musicians and architects and its first headquarters was located at Burlington House. Its first commanders were the painters Henry Wyndham Phillips and Frederic Leighton. However like many of his previous aspirations, this came to naught, when he was medically discharged due to a childhood operation which affected his hearing and so he never made it to the Front.  However, Cedric who was an accomplished horseman, took up his next position as part of the  war effort when he joined the Remounts Service which was responsible for the provisioning and training horses and mules which were bound for the Front.  He worked under Cecil Aldin, a Remount Purchasing Officer who was also an amateur artist.  In 1916 the Remounts Service was taken over by the Army and became the Army Service Corps Remounts Service and as Cedric was a civilian he had to leave the organisation.

Frances Hodgkins by Cedric Morris (1917)

In 1917 Morris travelled to Zennor, a village in south-west Cornwall, close to St Ives, where he stayed for twelve months painting in watercolours and studying the plants and fauna of the area.  It was here that he met the New Zealand painter, Frances Hodgkins.

Cedric Morris (Man with Macaw) by Frances Hodgkins (1930)

As well as his painting of her Frances painted one of him with a macaw in 1930.

Arthur Lett Haines

By the time of the Armistice and the end of the Great War on November 13th, 1918, Morris had left Cornwall and returned to London and it was on Armistice Day that he first met Arthur Lett Haines and fell in love with the painter and sculptor despite Haines living with his wife of two years, Gertrude Aimee Lincoln, an American and granddaughter of Abraham Lincoln.  Cedric Morris moved into the Lett Hains’ household in Carlyle Square, Chelsea and the trio had planned to move together to America.  However, the three-person tryst ended and Aimee moved alone to America.  With Aimee out of the picture, the two men travelled to Newlyn, Cornwall and set up home. Arthur Lett Haines, known by his middle-name Lett, was five years younger than Morris, being born on November 2nd 1894.  He was educated at St Paul’s School Public School, London and went on to serve in the British Army during the Great War.

Atelier Tapisseries, Djerba, Tunisia by Cedric Morris (1926)

Cedric Morris and Lett Haines moved to Cornwall to set up home in 1919 and at the same time they sub-let their London flat to Frances Hodgkins.  They moved houses a couple of times before settling in a house known as The Bowgie, which was a combination of a row of old cottages overlooking Newlyn harbour, and became a holiday home for the pair.  At Christmas 1920 they sold The Bowgie and moved to Paris. 

Cedric Morris and Lett Haines

The Paris that Morris and Lett Haines arrived at was said to have been a melting pot of artistic creativity. The pair would devote their evenings mingling in the cafes and bars in Montparnasse and mixed with such artistic luminaries as Marcel Duchamp, Peggy Guggenheim and the photographer, Man Ray.  The one thing that Cedric Morris had difficulty with whilst in Paris was his dislike of crowds and so he and Lett Haines would take every opportunity to escape the hubbub of city life and although living in Paris for the next five years, it was just a base they used as the two painters, along with friends, went off on their European travels. 

The Italian Hill Town by Cedric Morris (1922)

They went to North Africa in 1921, 1925 and 1926 and spent time in Germany in 1921 before journeying to Italy where they travelled the country for most of 1922.  Cedric held his first one-man exhibition at the Casa d’Arte Bragaglia in Rome which opened at the beginning of November 1922.  Casa d’Arte Bragaglia was an exhibition space for Futurist art and a meeting point for intellectuals and artists.  Unfortunately the exhibition opening coincided with Mussolini’s March on Rome, an organized mass demonstration and a coup d’état which resulted in Benito Mussolini’s National Fascist Party ascending to power in the Kingdom of Italy.  Futurist art was condemned by Mussolini and his Fascist followers and the exhibition was closed down.

Patisseries and a Croissant by Cedric Morris (c.1922)

Although living in Paris, Cedric Morris held the first of his two one-man exhibitions in London. The first was in June 1924. which was held at Gower Street, and organised by the Arts League of Service, a little-known cultural organisation founded in Britain in 1919 with the singular aim of bringing art and the ‘higher forms of entertainment’ to the masses. Cedric exhibited forty-four paintings and twelve drawings.

Experiment in Textures by Cedric Morris, (1923)

It was also in the 1920s that Morris dabbled with Abstract Art.

The Brothel by Cedric Morris (1922)

Cedric Morris and Lette Haines were great “people watchers” and Parisian streets, boulevards and bars were great places to study the locals. Morris took delight in recording the activities and idiosyncrasies of the people as we can see in the paintings he completed around that time. One example is his painting entitled The Brothel.

Les Bocks à Montparnasse (1922)

Another was his café scene for his painting entitled Les Bocks à Montparnasse.

The Entry of Moral Turpitude into New York Harbour by Cedric Morris (1926)

One of Cedric Morris’ unusual paintings around this time was one he completed in 1926, entitled The Entry of Moral Turpitude into New York Harbour, a painting bought by his friend, Vita Sackville-West. This painting’s compartmented depiction is unique in Morris’ work.  The idea for this depiction came about with the dramatic and scandalous case of the time when the United States immigration authorities refused to allow a titled Englishwoman to land and enter into New York after a sea passage from England.  The Immigration officials stated that their refusal was based on their belief that she was allegedly guilty of “moral turpitude”.  Moral turpitude refers to conduct that is considered contrary to community standards of justice, honesty, or good morals and so covers numerous types of misdemeanours.  In the case of the English women her misdemeanour was having been divorced by her husband and the man, also titled, travelling with her had been cited in the divorce case.  She and her companion are depicted in Morris’ painting standing at the bow of the ship wearing coronets.  Their transatlantic ship is being approached by uniformed officials in a boat marked “USA”.  On the quayside we see a group of men wearing black suits, large hats and white collars waiting for the ship’s arrival.  They are meant to be ministers of the church. 

A legal battle followed and their deportation order was eventually quashed.  The news of the case travelled back to England and the English Foreign Secretary at the time was asked if England should refuse entry to Britain of American divorcees.  The main painting is surrounded by fourteen smaller paintings that were meant to draw attention to contrasting impulses in America towards liberty and oppression, the latter being an obvious message in the main painting.  Other scenes depicted in the smaller peripheral paintings include Landing of Christopher Columbus, Landing of the Mayflower, fraternisation between colonists and American Indians, burning of witches, George Washington cutting down the cherry tree, assassination of Lincoln, to name but a few.  Cedric Morris, probably due to his sexuality, disliked and found offensive the more restrictive aspects of morality taught by the churches

Herbs, Salads and Seasoning by Marcel Boulestin, illustrated by Cedric Morris

Probably because of Morris’ dislike of big cities, he and Lett Haines left Paris and returned to England, staying for a time in the late summer of 1926 with his sister Nancy who lived in the Dorset village of Corfe whilst at the same time they were searching out studio space in London.  At around this time he met Marcel Boulestin who had wanted an illustrator for his soon-to-be-published book, Herbs, Salads and Seasoning.  Cedric Morris accepted the commission to illustrate the book.

The Dancing Sailor by Cedric Morris (1925)

Morris eventually found a large studio in London which catered for all his needs.  It was at 32 Great Ormond Street and early in 1927 Cedric and Lett Haines moved in.  It seems strange that Morris should leave the over-crowded French capital because of the suffocating atmosphere and yet locate his studio in London but it is thought that Lett Haines had persuaded him to make the move to the English capital as it would be possible to launch Cedric into the British art scene.  The Great Ormond Street studio became a very popular meeting place and party venue for the great and the good of the Bloomsbury Set.  The Bloomsbury Set was a group of English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the first half of the 20th century which included Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and Lytton Strachey.

From a Bedroom Window at 45 Brook Street, W1 by Cedric Morris (1926)

Soon after settling down in London, Morris became a member of the Seven and Five Society, an art group of seven painters and five sculptors, including artist Ben Nicholson and sculptors Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.  Morris submitted many of his works to exhibitions but one of his greatest successes was at his one-man exhibition at Arthur Tooth & Sons Gallery in New Bond Street, an art gallery founded in London, in 1842 by Charles Tooth.  It was a great success with thirty-one of his thirty-nine painting selling at the private viewing and the remaining ones sold by the time the exhibition closed.

Pound Farm, Higham

Not only was Cedric Morris a great artist who loved to paint, he also had another great love – a love of horticulture.  He was a true plantsman but living in London hindered that love and so he and Lett chose the country life in order to pursue Cedric’s passion for horticulture. And so, early in 1929, Cedric and Lett took the lease of Pound Farm, Higham, Suffolk, and in February 1930 they gave up their London studio. The farm was owned by the wealthy landlady and student, Mrs Vivien Doyle Jones. In 1932 their landlady died and bequeathed the farm to Cedric Morris. It was here that Morris lovingly created a memorable garden.

Flowers by Cedric Morris (c.1926)

Morris had always been interested in floral painting and now, at Pound Farm, he found the ideal location. He also became a successful and well-known breeder of irises.

Irises and Tulips by Cedric Morris

Cedric Morris had a great passion and extensive knowledge of gardening and one of his favourite hobbies was breeding irises.  In his painting Irises and Tulips we see a colourful arrangement of irises and tulips and an impressive white Arum Lily along with two stems of the Great Yellow Gentian.  The tulips are shown as starting to collapse which hints at this painting being carried out in the early part of summer.

River Zezere, Portugal by Cedric Morris (1950)

Three miles to the south-west of Pound Farm was the small town of Dedham, which a century earlier, was the home of the great English painter, John Constable.  On April 12th 1937 Cedric Morris and Lett Haines opened the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in an old house in the centre of Dedham.  Lett-Haines taught theory, whilst Morris taught by encouragement and example.  It is interesting to note that the school was described in a prospectus as “an oasis of decency for artists outside the system”.  It was a great success from the very start and by the end of the year, it had sixty students. 

Lucian Freud by Cedric Morris (1941)

In 1939 a seventeen-year-old student by the name of Lucian Freud enrolled at the school, after he had spent a short time studying at the Central School of Art in London. 

May Flowering Irises. No.2. by Cedric Morris (1935)

In July 1939, disaster struck when the old Dedham house was destroyed by fire. Living nearby was the artist Alfred Munnings, who would become the President of the Royal Academy in 1944. He was one of England’s finest painters of horses, and an outspoken critic of Modernism which Cedric Morris practiced   He shed no tears when the Dedham art establishment of Morris and Lett Haines burnt to the ground and it was reported that he had his chauffer drive him around the burnt-out house, gloating at its destruction, and cheered loudly at the destruction of what he saw as an odious development in art . 

Benton End, the home to the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing (Photo: Benton End House & Garden Trust)

Not to be deterred by this disaster, at the end of 1939, Morris and Lett Haines discovered Benton End, a rambling 16th-century house with gardens, on the outskirts of Hadleigh in Suffolk.  The large size of the place allowed the artists to live and run their school and also accommodate their students in one place, which hadn’t been possible at the previous venue.

In 1946, Cedric Morris and Lett-Haines became founder members of Colchester Art Society and later Morris became the society’s president.  In 1947, on the death of his father, Cedric became Sir Cedric Lockwood Morris, 9th Baronet.  Deteriorating eyesight in the mid 1970s curtailed most of his art.  The Dedham school closed shortly after Lett Haines died on February 25th 1978, aged 84.

Cedric Morris continued to live at Benton End until his own death on February 8th 1982, aged 92.   The two are buried near each other at Hadleigh Cemetery in Hadleigh.  Morris’s gravestone, in front, and Lett-Haines, in back on the right.

The information for this blog came from the many websites about the life of Cedric Morris and Lett Haines as well as Richard Morphet’s Tate Gallery book on Cedric Morris, the great Welsh artist.