MORRIS, William

This is the only completed easel painting that William Morris produced. It is a portrait in medieval dress of Jane Burden, whom Morris married in April 1859. The picture has been identified in the past as Queen Guenevere, partly owing to the fact that Morris published his first volume of poetry, The Defence of Guenevere, in March 1858. However, recent research has established convincingly that the picture is intended to represent Iseult mourning Tristram’s exile from the court of King Mark.

The painting is a splendid expresion of the intense medieval style prevailing in Rossetti’s circle in the late 1850s, with its emphasis on pattern and historical detail. Iseult appears to have recently arisen from her bed, where a small greyhound lies curled up among the crumpled sheets. She stands wistfully in her small chamber, her feelings for Tristram reinforced by the sprigs of rosemary, symbolising remembrance, in her crown.

The rich colours, the emphasis on pattern and details such as the illuminated missal reveal where Morris’s true talents lay. He was less at home with figure painting than with illumination, embroidery and woodcarving, and he struggled for months on this picture.

In 1861, Morris founded his own firm, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (from 1875 Morris & Co.), which produced stained glass, furniture, wallpaper and fabrics. Despite the original name of the firm (in which Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Webb and Ford Madox Brown were also active), Morris was the dominant figure, as was acknowledged when it was reorganized in 1875, with a fair amount of recrimination and bitterness, as Morris & Co. In the early years of the firm, he continued to work happily with a group, which in theory at least was his ideal. But from now on, there was a recurring cycle in his working life: he would start out with a group and a hope of cooperation; when the group failed, he would start out again, eventually operating on his own. The persistence of this ideal of working in a group is stated eloquently in News from Nowhere (1890), a picture of Utopia, which became his most famous prose work.

The picture shows the frontispiece to the 1893 Kelmscott Press edition of William Morris’s News from Nowhere. It depicts Kelmscott Manor.

This textile was designed by William Morris and produced by Morris & Company (1875-1940). It was woven at Queen Square or Merton Abbey Works, London.

Morris’s importance as both a designer and propagandist for the arts cannot easily be overestimated, and his influence has continued to be felt throughout the 20th century. He was a committed Socialist whose aim was that, as in the Middle Ages, art should be for the people and by the people, a view expressed in several of his writings. After abandoning his training as an architect, he studied painting among members of the Pre-Raphaelites. In 1861 he founded his own firm, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (from 1875 Morris & Co.), which produced stained glass, furniture, wallpaper and fabrics. The prelude to his finding his true artistic career was his dissatisfaction with the furniture available in the shops and his consequent determination to design his own.

The St George cabinet was designed by Philip Speakman Webb, painted by William Morris, and manufactured by Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. It is a rare example of Morris’s painted work and typical of the large pieces of furniture, Medieval in inspiration and crude in construction, associated with Morris and his circle from 1858. Family friends such as Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti posed as models for the painted figures. Morris’s wife Jane is depicted as the Princess.

This cabinet demonstrates a lack of co-ordination between physical structure and painted decoration; the five scenes of St George are unequally divided over the three doors.

In 1861, Morris established “The Firm,” a company that designed furniture, wallpaper, and textiles, which included Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown, and Burne-Jones.

Determined to reform the artistry of bookmaking, William Morris established Kelmscott Press in 1891. One of its finest productions was this medieval romance written by the founder in the archaic style of Thomas Malory and beautifully illustrated by Edward Burne-Jones. In the full-page illustration, Friends in Need Meet in the Wild Wood, the young knight Ralph meets a maiden disguised in armour. Morris designed the elaborate ornamental border of grapevines, the embellished capital letter, and the typeface. Both imagery and text influenced writers J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis.

In 1861 Morris founded his own firm, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. (from 1875 Morris & Co.), which produced stained glass, furniture, wallpaper and fabrics. The firm became well known for the making of stained glass; it is now regarded as one of the finest stained-glass makers of the 19th century, with rich colours (particularly Morris’s accomplishment) and designs by Burne-Jones, Rossetti and Morris himself. The glass was modern and, despite Morris’s interests in the medieval period, was not imitative, specifically in the choice of deep colours not found in medieval glass. The firm prospered owing to the spate of Gothic Revival church buildings and restorations taking place during the century. Later, when Morris became particularly concerned with the condition and restoration of older buildings, he refused to put new glass in old buildings.

The church of All Hallows in Allerton was built between 1872 and 1876 in the Gothic Revival style. The finest feature of the church is its stained glass. Of the 15 windows, 14 were designed by Edward Burne-Jones, with some input from William Morris, and were made by Morris & Co. The west window depicts the Four Evangelists.

Bradford Cathedral, on Stott Hill, Bradford, West Yorkshire, was a 15th-century church of which the west tower and north aisle, and much of the nave and original chancel remain. The south aisle, its clerestory and porch were remodelled in the 19th century, when the transepts were added. Sir Edward Maufe extended it to the east and to the north of the west tower.

The William Morris Window originally was inserted in the south wall at the eastern end of what is now the South Ambulatory, but was then part of the old Chancel. The original South Chancel window, from 1864, has been re-sited in three locations: the west walls of the transepts, and the illuminated window in the North Ambulatory. This was originally a perpendicular window of five cinquefoil-headed lights beneath three tiers of tracery.

The picture shows part of the William Morris Window in the North Ambulatory. The central figure, Salvatore Mundi, is by architect Albert Moore. The angels, some playing harps and dulcimers, others holding palms, wreaths and chaplets, were originally fitted into the tracery at the top of the old window, and were designed by William Morris.