Cedric Morris is often referred to as an artist-plantsman, and while as a breeder of plants, most particularly of irises, he has always been highly regarded in horticultural circles, his reputation as a painter has been subject to regular fluctuations. Last year, two excellent and complementary London exhibitions — Cedric Morris: Artist Plantsman at the Garden Museum and Cedric Morris: Beyond the Garden Wall at Philip Mould & Company — did a great deal to revive interest in his paintings; and so a joint biography of Morris and his partner Arthur Lett-Haines is welcome.
They met in 1918 at an Armistice party hosted by Lett (as he was always known) and his wife. The married couple were about to emigrate to America, but at the last moment Lett decided to stay behind and instead set up house with Morris in the artists’ colony at Newlyn in Cornwall.
The two men would live together —though not always in harmony and with some notable infidelities — for the rest of their lives, eventually settling on the Essex-Suffolk border, where they ran the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing.
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