Event date: 13 August 2024
Review by Danusia Wurm
Cafe de la Rotonde, Cedric Morris
“As an artist, you must cultivate a relationship with your work so that it becomes your best friend. You must be able to go to it however you’re feeling - happy, tired, bored, frustrated, randy, whatever - and have a conversation with it”
The recently refurbished Gainsborough's House in Sudbury provided the stunning venue for Revealing Nature, an exhibition that charts the artistic careers of Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines who famously first met on Armistice night in 1918 and were partners in love and art for sixty years thereafter.
ncas members were welcomed by Gainsborough's House Director, Calvin Winner, who explained its history and more recent evolution, principally the new extension and galleries designed by architects ZMMA, as well as plans for the future.
The group was then taken on an illuminating and insightful tour of the show by its curator Dr Patricia Hardy. With over eighty loans from Tate and the National Portrait Gallery and private collectors, the exhibition includes Morris’ early portraits and still lives, flower paintings and landscapes and Lett-Haines’ lesser known works, principally surrealist paintings which were completely new to ncas members.
Uniquely, the works remained part of Cedric Morris's private collection until his death in 1982. Maggi Hambling, a student and friend of Cedric Morris, has been instrumental in introducing the collection to Gainsborough's House and in selecting the paintings and drawings for this exhibition.
Cedric Morris is most widely celebrated for his paintings of flowers, which are often likened to portraits on account of their capacity to capture not only an accurate likeness but also the individual character of each bloom. In addition to his floral works, the exhibition featured portraits which exhibit his keen eye for conveying mood and emotion whilst his landscapes reveal his deep affiliation with nature.
The Journey, Arthur Lett-Haines
Considered one of Britain’s first surrealists, Arthur Lett-Haines produced a body of work that is esoteric, abstract and organic. It is also little known and ripe for rediscovery. His fascinating paintings on show evidence the influence of surrealist artists, such as Max Ernst, and demonstrate his fascination with a growing amalgamation of trends emerging in European art.
Working together, Morris and Lett-Haines went on to found the hugely influential East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in 1937 which taught a generation of artists, where the atmosphere was described as 'robust and coarse, exquisite and sensitive all at once, also faintly dangerous'. In addition to Maggi Hambling, pupils there included Lucian Freud, Lucy Harwood, David Kentish and Joan Warburton.
Revealing Nature continues until 3 November 2024.
Review by ncas trustee Danusia Wurm