Bird and Pomegranate wallpaper

Details

Date: designed c.1926, reprinted c.1950
Dimensions: 623.6 x 57.2
Object Type: wallpaper
Technique: block-printed in distemper
Catalogue number: B3
Designer: Kersey, Kathleen, Miss (b.1889)
Manufacturer: Arthur Sanderson and Sons Ltd
Credit notes: Presented by Arthur Sanderson & Sons Ltd, 1950

This wallpaper was designed around 1926 by Kathleen Kersey, a member of the Morris & Co. design studio. The overall design is clear and bold, with coloured birds and pomegranate fruit on a plain bright blue background.

This version was printed c.1950 using original Morris & Co. blocks by the firm Arthur Sanderson & Sons Ltd., who acquired the blocks from Morris & Co. when they closed in 1940. A label on the reverse has the Sanderson colourway number ‘Bird and Pomegranate 510’.

Details

Date: designed 1884, printed before 1940
Object Type: wallpaper
Technique: block-printed
Catalogue number: B68
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Manufacturer: Jeffrey & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by Francis Leach, Esq., 1956

William Morris frequently used tulips in his design for fabric and wallpaper. Here the small wild tulips form a mid ground with a foreground of ribbons of larger peonies intertwining with scrolling stems. Morris’s daughter May wrote how the character of this design was ‘all “Kelmscott” to me: the peony and the wild tulip are two of the richest blossomings of the spring garden at the Manor”. Kelmscott Manor was the Morris family’s country home in Oxfordshire.

Morris registered the design for ‘Wild Tulip’ wallpaper on 21st November 1884. The repeat is 64.8 x 26.7. This example in pale blue is printed down the right edge ‘MORRIS & Co Ltd REGISTERED No 17502’. It was donated to the Gallery by the family of Frederick Richard Leach, a Cambridge based master decorator and stained glass designer who worked for Morris & Co.

Details

Date: 1892
Object Type: book
Technique: woodblock
Catalogue number: K880
Artist: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1961

Frustrated by the poor quality of Victorian mass-produced paperbacks, Morris established his own private press, the Kelmscott Press, in 1891 to produce handmade books. The first book to be printed was the Golden Legend, a medieval guide to Christian saints. Morris designed a new typeface for the text resembling a font he found in a fifteenth-century hand-printed book. He took inspiration from the original font claiming ‘I think I mastered the essence of it, I did not copy it’. William Morris’s original drawing for this frontispiece is also in the Gallery’s collection, see: D239.

Details

Date: 02.07.1870
Dimensions: 34.1 x 50.5
Object Type: drawing
Material: pencil on paper
Catalogue number: D183
Sitter: Morris (née Burden) | Jane | 1839 | 1914
Artist: Rossetti | Dante Gabriel | 1828 | 1882

This intimate portrait of Jane Morris, William Morris’s wife, was drawn by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Rossetti was a key associate of William Morris and a founding member of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. when it was established in 1861. When he drew this work in 1870 he was involved in an intense emotional relationship with Jane Morris, which complicated his work with the Firm. In 1875 Morris restructured the Firm as Morris & Co., buying out the original partners including Rossetti.

Details

Date: 1866
Dimensions: 47.5 x 79.5
Object Type: watercolour
Material: watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: BrW65
Artist: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1941

The picture is Burne-Jones’s most considered essay in the prevailing classical style of the later 1860s. The mood of restrained sadness, the chalky colours (characteristic of other paintings of 1866), the simple outlines and low relief of the figures all point to this conclusion. The design owes much to Burne-Jones’s study of the Parthenon frieze in the British Museum, and in fact a drawing at Birmingham for the figure on the right (207’04) showing the figure sitting upright, is very close to the figure of Ares in the group of seated deities (Parthenon frieze, slab IV, fig.27) which he copied about 1864 in a sketch book in the Victoria and Albert Museum. (E.3-1955). The Lament though dated 1866 was largely painted in 1865. There are numerous studies for The Lament and a later oil version was sold at Christie’s (4 July 1967 lot 57) which has a different background.

Details

Date: 1867
Dimensions: 54 x 37
Object Type: watercolour
Material: watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: BrW48
Attributed artist: Rossetti | Dante Gabriel | 1828 | 1882
Attributed artist: Dunn, Henry Treffry, 1838, 1899
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1935

This is one of three watercolour replicas painted by Rossetti and assistants of his original oil painting, for which the model was Alexa Wilding, whereas here the model is Ellen Smith, a laundry maid who Rossetti ‘discovered’ in Chelsea.

This painting was largely painted under Rossetti’s supervision by H. T. Dunn, who became his studio assistant in 1867. It is probable the finishing touches were added by Rossetti himself, as the quality of the execution is superior to most of Dunn’s works. the couplet of poetry inscribed on the frame is from a French ballad, pledging happiness by day and night to the unseen partner of the loving cup.

Details

Date: c.1860s
Dimensions: 60 x 44
Object Type: oil
Catalogue number: BrO47
Artist: Paton, Joseph Noel, Sir, 1821, 1901
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1935

Paton was a Scottish painter, illustrator and sculptor. Highly successful he specialised in painting detailed compositions illustrating biblical episodes and imaginative stories based on romantic myths and legends. His interest in achieving convincing naturalistic detail was inspired by his friend John Everett Millais, the Pre-Raphaelite painter, whom he met while both were students at the Royal Academy Schools in London. Millais invited Paton to become a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood but he turned it down. Although not an official member of the Brotherhood his paintings of historical, fairy, allegorical and religious subjects were painted in the Pre-Raphaelite style.

The subject-matter of this painting depicts the Renaissance artist Michelangelo, and reveals how Paton’s interests extended beyond his expertise in Scottish and Celtic folklore. Michelangelo is shown seated in a loggia, enveloped in a red cloak and asleep, behind him extends a detailed Italianate landscape with evening sky and setting sun. The title ‘Michelangelo’s Dream’ alludes to his slumbering state but is also a reference to Michelangelo’s masterpiece ‘The Dream’ (Courtauld Institute, London) a drawing depicting a nude youth being roused by a winged spirit from the vices that surround him. ‘The Dream’ was probably part of the celebrated group of drawings which Michelangelo made as gifts for Tommaso de’ Cavalieri, a young Roman nobleman with whom he had fallen passionately in love.

Details

Date: 1870
Dimensions: 78 x 55.5
Object Type: oil
Material: oil on canvas
Catalogue number: BrO30
Artist: Crane, Walter, 1845, 1915
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1936

‘Love’s Altar’ was painted by Walter Crane in 1870. It depicts a young man kneeling before an altar surmounted by a portrait of a young woman. The portrait is of Crane’s fiancée Mary Frances Andrews, whom he later married on 6 September 1871. Crane wrote a sonnet to accompany the work, published in ‘A Book of Verse’, 1891 (see below). It was exhibited at the Old Bond Street Gallery in 1870 described as ‘Love’s Sanctuary’. Whilst on display it attracted adverse criticism, the ‘Art Journal’ describing it an ‘an irreverent parody’ and commenting on ‘the incongruity of medieval treatment coupled with classical costume and accessories’.

Love’s Sanctuary

NO more I go to worship with the crowd

In Christian temples, pagan now to me,

No dim cathedral hears me pray aloud,

I sing no credo, as it used to be:

Though kneeling not beneath the roof of Rome,

Or in protesting fanes, I have a shrine—

A holiest of holies—Love’s sweet home,

On whose white altar lies life’s bread and wine.

There oft, in saddened times and weary hours,

To secret sanctuary do I flee,

Where one sweet presence soothes, like breath of flowers,

To whom their incense rises ceaselessly;

For there, though not a Roman devotee,

Sweet virgin Mary I do worship thee.

Details

Date: designed 1876, made 1880s
Dimensions: 267 x 150
Object Type: textile
Material: silk and linen
Technique: hand-embroidered
Catalogue number: F434
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Maker: Morris (née Burden) | Jane | 1839 | 1914
Maker: Morris, Jenny (1861 - 1935)
Credit notes: Purchased with support from The Art Fund and The Friends of the William Morris Gallery, 2013

Jane Morris was a skillful embroiderer but this is one of very few surviving pieces that can be definitively attributed to her hand. She worked it with her eldest daughter, Jenny basing the design on an original 1876 design by William Morris.

The design was sold through the Royal School of Art Needlework in London in the late 1870s. This version was exhibited at the first Arts and Crafts exhibition in 1888. Later it was sent by May Morris, the younger daughter of Jane and William Morris, to Paris for the Louvre exhibition of British and Irish decorative work in 1914. The remains of the exhibition label was stitched to the reverse.

Details

Date: 1899
Object Type: book
Catalogue number: K625b
Author: Day, Lewis Foreman (1845 - 1910)
Publisher: J.S. Virtue and Co. Ltd

Details

Date: c.1908
Dimensions: 25 x 25
Object Type: drawing
Material: pencil on paper
Catalogue number: D435
Artist: Merritt, Anna Lea, 1844, 1930
Sitter: Toynbee, Charlotte Maria (30 March 1841 - 8 January 1931)
Credit notes: Presented by the Trustees of the Anna Lea Merritt Estate, via the V&A, 1963

Portrait in coloured crayon of Charlotte Maria Toynbee, née Atwood, by the American artist Anna Lee Merrit. Toynbee studied at Oxford University, where she met her future husband, the economic historian Arnold Toynbee. After her husband’s death Toynbee served on the committee aiming to create a settlement in Oxford, which resulted in Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel, London (named after Arnold Toynbee). Toynbee was Poor Law Guardian as well as managing and contributing to the finances of the female Oxford college Lady Margaret Hall for forty years. This drawing is possibly for a study for an oil portrait of Toynbee by Merrit, in 1908.

Details

Date: 1913
Dimensions: 26.2 x 17
Object Type: design
Material: pencil, ink and watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: A564
Artist: Whall, Christopher Whitworth (1849 - 1924)
Credit notes: Gift of Christopher Whall, 1973

This design for a three light window was designed by Christopher Whall in 1913 for St Mary and All Souls Church, Whalley, Lancashire. It was created in memory of Harriette Sawyer the wife of H.W. Worsley-Taylor KC of Moreton; Worsley-Taylor was a judge. The design depicts the Blessed Virgin Mary and a child in the central panel with Gabriel holding a Lily on the left and an Angel holding a sceptre on the right.

Details

Date: 1887-1967
Dimensions: 13.5 x 19.8
Object Type: design
Material: pencil, ink and watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: A672
Artist: Whall, Veronica (1887 - 1967)
Credit notes: Gift of Christopher Whall, 1973

This design for a three light window was designed by Veronica Whall. It depicts The Three Maries a the tomb of the Risen Christ.

Veronica Whall was the daughter of Christopher Whall, she began assisting her father in her early teens. In the 1900s she attended classes, including Edward Johnston’s in lettering and calligraphy, at the Central School of Arts & Crafts. With her brother, Hew Bernard Whall, she set up ‘The Stonebridge Press’ and illustrated a number of its hand printed publications. By the time of the First World War, Whall was one of her father’s principal assistants, becoming a partner in the firm Whall & Whall Ltd in 1922. After her father’s death in 1924, she carried on the work of the Whall studio, helped by her brother until her retirement in 1953. Among her most important commissions were windows for Carlisle and Leicester Cathedrals and the complete glazing scheme for King Arthur’s Hall.

Details

Date: 1921
Dimensions: 34.1 x 27.1
Object Type: design
Material: pencil, ink and watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: A553
Artist: Whall, Christopher Whitworth (1849 - 1924)
Credit notes: Gift of Christopher Whall, 1973

This design for a five light window was an unexceuted design by Christopher Whall in 1921 for St. Leonard Church, Middleton, Lancashire. The first and fifth panel depict the story of Psalm 107 with small subject panels, where sailors go out to sea and are humbled by the power of a storm, they then call out to Jesus who calms the storm. The middle panel depict Jesus’ Ascension with Fides and Spes either side of Him. There is quarry glazing above and below.

Details

Date: 1920
Dimensions: 28.1 x 17
Object Type: design
Material: pencil, ink and watercolour on paper
Catalogue number: A578
Artist: Whall, Christopher Whitworth (1849 - 1924)
Credit notes: Gift of Christopher Whall, 1973

This design for a three light window was designed by Christopher Whall in 1920 as a War memorial for St. Matthew Church, Pentrich, Derbyshire. It is in memory of Captain Bernard Ridley Winthrop Smith, 1st Scots Guards, who fell in action at Ypres in November 1914, at the age of 31. St Michael is in the centre, using no weapon but pointing to the banner of the Cross. In the side lights are St George and St Louis, the warrior saints of England and France.

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