This portrait miniature shows William Morris’s father, William Morris Snr. It was probably painted in 1824 to celebrate Morris Snr’s engagement to Emma Shelton. Another portrait miniature of Emma is also in the collection (Object number H30).
In about 1820, Moris Snr. was articled as a clerk in the firm of Harris, Sanderson and Harris, discount brokers, at 32 Lombard Street. In his early thirties, he became a partner in the firm, then known as Sanderson & Co. and in July 1826, soon after his admission to partnership in the firm William married Emma Shelton.
At first the couple lived over the business in Lombard Street, but in 1833 after the birth of their first two daughters, they moved to Elm House, Clay Street, Walthamstow, from where William Morris Snr. travelled in daily to the city by stage coach. It was at Elm House that William Morris was born in 1834 – his parents’ eldest son and third child; six more children were to follow.
William Morris Snr’s father had been ‘very religious’ and he himself was a staunch Evangelical. He was also a shrewd business man, making a considerable fortune and becoming a well-known figure in the City. In 1840 he moved his family from Elm House to Woodford Hall, a Georgian mansion standing in fifty acres of park adjoining Epping Forest.
Morris Snr invested in Devon Great Consuls, a highly profitable company launched in 1844 to mine copper near Tavistock, He held 272 shares which for a while rose to the value of over £200, 000. His own enjoyment of this wealth was brief as he died at the age of fifty in 1847 and was buried in the churchyard at Woodford where his tomb still remains. His widow and the family moved in 1848 to live in a smaller establishment, the Water House (now the William Morris Gallery) where they remained until 1856. Emma later moved to Leyton House, and finally to The Lordship, Much Hadham, where she died at the age of 89 in 1894.
