SIR CEDRIC MORRIS | STILL LIFE (SCABIOUS, CARNATIONS AND HEMEROCALLIS)

Acquired by the late owner in the mid-1970s

Property from the Estate of Beth Chatto (1923– 2018) OBE VMH 

Beth Chatto OBE VMH was one of Britain’s pre-eminent horticulturists of the 20^th century, a proponent of ‘right plant right place’, author of numerous books including The Dry Garden, 1978, The Damp Garden, 1982, and Beth Chatto’s Gravel Garden, 2000, a respected lecturer, winner of 10 successive gold medals at the Chelsea Flower Show, and founder of the Beth Chatto Gardens outside Colchester. It was through her plant expertise that Beth Chatto met Cedric Morris and, along with her husband Andrew Chatto, a plant environmentalist and farmer, became part of the set that congregated around Cedric Morris' and Arthur Lett-Haines’ home, Benton End, in Suffolk. Beth later recalled of their first meeting, ‘I remember my first impression so clearly. Cedric dressed in crumpled corduroys with a small silk scarf above his shirt was smoking a pipe, which he held with his beautiful slender hands. After tea, he showed us all round the garden. [It was…] a bewildering, mind-stretching, eye-widening canvas of colour, textures and shapes, created primarily with bulbous and herbaceous plants. Later I came to realise it was possibly the finest collection of such plants in the country, but that first afternoon there were far too many unknown plants for me to see them, let alone recognise them.’ (Beth Chatto quoted in Hugh St. Clair, A Lesson in Art & Life, The Colourful World of Cedric Morris & Arthur Lett-Haines, Pimpernel Press, London, 2019, p.150).

This first encounter would lead to a longstanding friendship, based on a mutual devotion to gardens and creativity, and over the course of this friendship, Beth and Andrew Chatto would amass the present collection of paintings by Cedric and Lett, a testament to their shared passions. ‘[It is] impossible to say what he [Cedric Morris] has meant to me. [He] influenced me in so many ways, made my life. And many many others. A great man, and a very modest man, in his own way.’ (Beth Chatto, personal diary, quoted in Catherine Horwood, Beth Chatto: A Life with Plants, Pimpernel Press, London, 2019). Led by two superb still-life flower paintings by Cedric and with an intimate portrait sketch of Cedric by Lett, the group encapsulates the strong ties between this artistic, bohemian group that existed outside the mainstream of London and yet fundamentally changed the course of the still-life genre and horticulture respectively. As Beth recalled, Cedric approached his garden as a canvas and his canvases as re-presentations of his plants, a symbiosis of creativity.