Crown Imperial, damask

Details

Date: 1906
Dimensions: 47.5 x 52.8
Object Type: print
Material: paper
Technique: etching on copper
Catalogue number: BrP109
Artist: Brangwyn, Frank, Sir (1867 - 1956)
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1936

Frank Brangwyn made this etching from a drawing he made in Constantinople (Istanbul, Turkey) c. 1896. 70 proofs of the etching were made before the plate was destroyed.
A part cut from this plate showing the group of figures around the well was printed in 1919 as a separate etching, ‘The Turkish Well’ (‘Un Puits Turc’) 15 x 21 cm. with the addition of a different background showing houses with arcaded facades.

The view shows Santa Sophia, built in 532-7 during the reign of the Emperor Justinian it was one of the most famous of Byzantine churches; it was turned into a mosque after the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453.

Details

Date: c.1881
Dimensions: 29 x 21 x 2
Object Type: book
Catalogue number: K775
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Printer: Walker | Emery | 1851 | 1933
Designer: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1956

This volume contains illustrations to ‘The Story of Cupid and Psyche’ for the projected edition of ‘The Earthly Paradise’ begun in September 1865. The illustrations were engraved on wood by Morris and his friends and associates in the Firm. Burne-Jones did illustrations for some of the other tales in ‘The Earthly Paradise’, but the Cupid and Psyche wood engravings were the most completed part of the project which was abandoned in 1868 after trial pages, set in Basle and Caslon types at the Chiswick Press, did not prove satisfactory.

In 1881, a few copies of these sets of illustrations were made, apparently by Morris himself, by friction printing. A second series (numbering about 8 sets according to Sydney Cockerell) was pulled for Morris by Emery Walker at his premises at 16 Cliffords Inn during the Kelmscott Press years; all these were on Kelmscott Press paper. This volume (one of the 8 sets) was given to Sydney Cockerell by Jane Morris c.1898. Other sets are in the Pierpont Morgan Library (Gift of John M. Crawford) and the Fitzwilliam Museum (J.R. Holliday Bequest 1927).

This volume includes a handwritten list of the illustrations in William Morris’s hand.

Drawings related to the Cupid and Psyche illustrations and other tales from ‘The Earthly Paradise’ are in the following collections: A volume of 86 preliminary drawings of various sizes executed in pencil, pen and ink or chalk, is now in Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (648’27). A series of 47 finished designs in pencil on tracing paper was given by Burne-Jones to Ruskin, who presented them to Oxford University in 1875 (now in the Ashmolean). Another volume of 39 drawings formerly in the collection of F.S. Ellis is in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; 36 of these are on tracing paper, the remaining 3 on drawing paper; 21 relate to the Cupid and Psyche story though some are variants of scenes which were never engraved on wood; others are for the Story of Pygmalion and The Hill of Venus.

Details

Date: 1915
Dimensions: 101.2 x 106
Object Type: oil
Material: oil on canvas
Catalogue number: BrO54
Artist: Shannon, Charles Hazelwood, 1863, 1937
Credit notes: Brangwyn Gift, 1948

Charles Shannon Hazelwood was a British artist best known for his portraiture. This painter shows the two figures of a reaper and sower walking through an agricultural landscape, the young man in red (the sower) is taking handfuls of corn from his bag, whilst the morbid figure of the reaper dressed in black, clutches his arm, his face oppressively close to the sower. Painted in 1915, the subject- a young man stalked by the figure of death, is perhaps a response to the loss of young life during World War One which had commenced the year before. A smaller half-size version of the same theme is in the Usher Gallery, Lincoln (LCNUG 1927.1930).

For a related study of two heads, initialled, titled and dated, see: ‘Charles Shannon’ (Ernest Benn; 1924), pl.33.

Details

Date: c. 1890
Object Type: drawing
Material: chalk on paper
Catalogue number: BrD29
Artist: Leighton, Frederick, Lord, 1830, 1896
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1936

Chalk study for Leighton’s oil painting ‘Solitude’, now in Maryhill Museum of Fine Arts collection, Washington. See also BrD29a for another study of the same subject. Solitude was inspired by studies the artist made of the Lynn of Dee near Braemar, Scotland. He described the spot to his sister as a location where “the vehemence of winter has scooped and worn pools so deep that . . . you come at last to absolute dark brown night . . . no sound, no faintest gurgle even reaches your ear; the silent mystery of it all absolutely invades and possesses you; that is what I vainly tried to put into my Solitude.”

A more worked up version of this drawing appeared in: Spielmann., M. H. “Current Art. Royal Academy, — I.” Magazine of Art (1890). London: Cassell and Company. Pp. 217-21.

Details

Date: c. 1890
Object Type: drawing
Material: chalk on paper
Catalogue number: BrD29a
Artist: Leighton, Frederick, Lord, 1830, 1896
Credit notes: Brangwyn gift, 1936

Chalk study for Leighton’s oil painting ‘Solitude’, now in Maryhill Museum of Fine Arts collection, Washington. See also BrD29 for another study of the same subject. Solitude was inspired by studies the artist made of the Lynn of Dee near Braemar, Scotland. He described the spot to his sister as a location where “the vehemence of winter has scooped and worn pools so deep that . . . you come at last to absolute dark brown night . . . no sound, no faintest gurgle even reaches your ear; the silent mystery of it all absolutely invades and possesses you; that is what I vainly tried to put into my Solitude.”

This drawing was reproduced in: Spielmann., M. H. “Current Art. Royal Academy, — I.” Magazine of Art (1890). London: Cassell and Company. Pp. 217-21.

Details

Dimensions: 3.0 x 11.8 x 5.6
Object Type: furniture
Technique: carved
Catalogue number: H4
Artist: Unknown
Owner: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: Presented by Dr. Robert Steele, 1942

A snuff box used by William Morris of unknown, possibly Indian, origin. May Morris in her “Introduction to the Collected Works of William Morris” vol. XIII p.xix records: “He (Morris) took pleasure in all sorts of beautiful and precious boxes, and he prized certain trinkets, keepsakes from friends, such as an inlaid snuff box of choice work, though his everyday snuff-box was a somewhat plain silver one, and he carried his tobacco in a shabby little home-made bag of blue chintz – sometimes, until found and impounded by one of us, in a bank-bag tied with a bit of tape.”

The silver snuff box was given to Philip Webb by Jane Morris after Morris’s death. The blue tobacco pouch is in the Gallery’s collection (H28).

Details

Date: 1864-65
Dimensions: 20.3 x 75
Object Type: design
Catalogue number: A28
Artist: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: WMG, purchase, 1940

For the chancel roof beams at All Saints’ church, Middleton Cheney, Northants., where Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. were employed by the office of Sir G.G. Scott to decorate the roof and make stained glass for the east (and other) windows 1864-65. This design is annotated with instructions by William Morris for the painter. The roof decoration in the chancel and nave was executed from Morris’s designs by a ‘Mr Cottam of Banbury’, probably George Cottam who was a painter, decorator and gilder working from 28 High Street, Banbury between 1835 and 1869. See also related A27.

Details

Date: 1881
Dimensions: 43 x 23
Object Type: sculpture
Catalogue number: H54
Owner: Morris, William, 1834, 1896
Credit notes: Transfer from Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, 2011

This drinking horn was made in Iceland, the carved inscription reads ‘HVITINGR’ (drinking horn) 1881. William Morris visited Iceland twice, firstly in 1871, then in 1873. The horn was donated to the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter in 1939 by Mary Lobb, May Morris’s companion and later transferred to the William Morris Gallery.

Details

Date: c. 1890s
Dimensions: 121.9 x 71.8 x 59.7
Object Type: furniture
Material: mahogany, stained woods, damask
Catalogue number: G60
Attributed retailer: Liberty & Co, Ltd
Credit notes: Presented by Miss Freeston, 1975

Mahogany armchair with high back decorated in centre with inlaid panel in stained woods of stylised tree, the top of the back and sides having inlaid stylised plant forms in stained woods, the lower armrests terminating in finials with flat capping tops similarly inlaid. Back, seat and sides upholstered in machine woven damask with pattern of tulips in green and pink picked out in machine woven tapestry. Similar in style to furniture designed by Leonard Francis Wyburd, who ran the Liberty design studio for Liberty & Co. (eg. Music cabinet – D1 in catalogue of Liberty Exhibition, V&A Museum, London, 1975, illus. p. 43.)

Details

Date: 1880s
Dimensions: 83.8 x 53.3 x 48.3
Object Type: furniture
Material: wood and rush seat
Catalogue number: G65
Retailer: James Shoolbred & Co. (c.1820 - 1931)
Credit notes: Presented by Mr Alan Green, 1978.

James Shoolbred & Co. was a furnishing, decorating and cabinet-making company, with premises at Tottenham House, Tottenham Court Road, London and retailed reproduction furniture in a variety of styles viz. ‘Adam’, ‘Medieval’, ‘Queen Anne’, and ‘Louis XVI’ (see illustrated catalogues 1874-89); still extant in 1928 when the company showed an exhibition of ‘Modern Furniture’ by the French Decoration Interieure Moderne group who had shown at the 1925 Paris Salon des Artistes-Decorateurs exhibition. This chair is one of a pair (see: G65b).

Another identical chair (not ebonised) with the Fine Arts Society, Bond Street in 1979.

Details

Date: c. 1863
Dimensions: 88.9 x 50.8 x 45.7
Object Type: furniture
Material: wood and rush seat
Technique: painted wood
Catalogue number: G77
Manufacturer: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Attributed designer: Rossetti | Dante Gabriel | 1828 | 1882

In style and construction thsi armchair complements Morris & Co’s range of ‘Sussex’ chairs, also based on traditonal types, which the Firm manufactured from the mid-1860s. The earliest known illustrations of the ‘Rossetti’ chair date from mid-July 1863, where it appears in photographs taken by William Downey in the garden of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s house, Tudor House, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London, of William Bell Scott, Rossetti and Ruskin. See the chair in the right corner of the room in Henry Treffry Dunn’s gouache of 1882 (National Portrait Gallery) of Rossetti reading his ‘Ballads & Poems’ to Theodore Watts-Dunton in the drawing room at Tudor House, 1882, which has red-painted decoration similar to this example. Although the design of the chair is credited to Rossetti, its style suggests origins in French provincial furniture.
Made by Morris & Co. as part of its rush-seated furniture range, the chair continued to be made well into the 20th century, see the Morris & Co. catalogue c. 1911 ‘Specimens of Upholstered Furniture’ where it was priced at 16/6. The examples with additional red painted decoration, as G77, are uncommon and were probably made to special order; a few green-stained examples are also known.

Details

Date: c.1860s
Dimensions: 86.4 x 49 x 41.3
Object Type: furniture
Material: turned, ebonised wood with rush seat
Catalogue number: G27a
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Retailer: Morris & Co.
Owner: Brown, Ford Madox, 1821, 1893
Credit notes: WMG purchase, 1957

The William Morris Gallery holds a variety of chairs and settles from the Morris & Co. Sussex range. This example with plain, not turned rails is considered to be one of the earliest. The chair, one of a pair with G27b, was owned by Ford Madox Brown, one of the original founders of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. The pair of chairs were purchased from the sale of his effects by his friend and executor, R. S. Garnett. Garnett’s daughter, Mrs R. Nickalls, later inherited the chairs and sold them to the William Morris Gallery in 1957.

Details

Date: designed c. 1860s
Dimensions: 84.5 x 48.3 x 40.7
Object Type: furniture
Material: turned, ebonised wood with rush seat
Catalogue number: G29
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Retailer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by Miss A. Rigby, 1961

Rush-seated armchair in turned, ebonised wood frame and rush seat. This chair has been widely attributed to the designer Philip Webb in the early 1860s. It was manufactured by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. and continuously produced by Morris & Co. until the twentieth century. The full range include armless chairs and a three-seater settle. The name ‘Sussex’ chair can be attributed to Morris’s biographer J.W. Mackail who commented that the chair was adapted from a country chair found in Sussex. Black or red Sussex chairs were used in Morris’s first family home Red House. Another earlier version of this armchair without the vertical spindles in the back was also produced by the Firm, see G27a&b.

Details

Date: designed c. 1860
Dimensions: 84.5 x 48.3 x 40.7
Object Type: furniture
Material: turned, ebonised wood with rush seat
Catalogue number: G55
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Retailer: Morris & Co.
Owner: Jack, Jessie, Miss (1894 - 1972)
Credit notes: WMG purchase

Rush-seated armchair in turned, ebonised wood frame and rush seat. This chair has been widely attributed to the designer Philip Webb in the early 1860s. It was manufactured by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. and continuously produced by Morris & Co. until the twentieth century. The full range include armless chairs and a three-seater settle. The name ‘Sussex’ chair can be attributed to Morris’s biographer J.W. Mackail who commented that the chair was adapted from a country chair found in Sussex. Black or red Sussex chairs were used in Morris’s first family home Red House and this example was acquired from Jessie Jack, who’s parents George and Annie Jack, both worked for Morris & Co. Another version of this armchair without the spindles in the back was also produced by the Firm, see G27a&b.

Details

Date: designed c.1926, printed 1950-1990
Dimensions: 57.2 x 83.9
Object Type: wallpaper
Catalogue number: B143
Designer: Kersey, Kathleen, Miss (b.1889)
Manufacturer: Arthur Sanderson and Sons Ltd
Credit notes: Presented by Miss H. Brooks, 1991

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. It was the last wallpaper design produced by Morris & Co.

This version was printed using original Morris & Co. blocks by the firm Arthur Sanderson & Sons Ltd., who acquired the blocks from Morris & Co. when they closed in 1940. It is stamped on the reverse ‘Sanderson Wallpapers British Made’.

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 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.

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