Revealing Nature: The Art of Cedric Morris and Lett-Haines

This exhibition is the first to chart the phenomenal artistic careers of Cedric Morris (1889–1982) and Arthur Lett-Haines (1894–1978), who were partners in love and art for sixty years.

With over eighty loans from Tate, the National Portrait Gallery and a wealth of private collections, the range of their art becomes apparent. Morris is celebrated not only for his flower paintings and still lives but also for portraits and landscapes, and Lett-Haines is revealed as an important figure in developing Surrealist art in Britain. They famously met on Armistice Night in 1918 and spent the 1920s absorbing European Modernism in France, Italy and Germany, meeting a huge range of artists and writers. Their paintings, drawings and sculptures are highly distinctive and have a unique place in the history of twentieth-century art.

Based in Suffolk for most of their lives, primarily at Benton End, they established the East Anglian School for Painting and Drawing in 1937 which taught a generation of artists including Lucian Freud and Maggi Hambling.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication, The Art of Cedric Morris and Lett-Haines featuring essays by Richard Morphet, Sean Burns, Emma Boyd and exhibition curator, Dr Patricia Hardy, with an interview between Calvin Winner and Maggi Hambling, priced at £22.50 published by Gainsborough’s House and printed by Blackmore Ltd.

The exhibition is sponsored by The Cedric Morris Foundation and Philip Mould & Company.

Image credits
Unknown, Cedric Morris and Lett-Haines and Rubio the parrot, c. 1929–36, the estate of Cedric Morris, Photo: Tate
Cedric Morris, Flowers in a Portuguese Landscape, 1968, Philip Mould & Company, London
Arthur Lett-Haines, The Escape, 1931, private collection