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Richard Morris

@ahistoryinart.bsky.social

7.8K followers 95 following 2.5K posts

Art historian, dealer/art consultant 19thC and 20thC British/European art. Writing book on lesser known great artists. Seen in/on: CNN, NBC, The Spectator, The Times etc website: richardmorris.org [email protected]

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Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 2d

My piece in @thespectator1828.bsky.social this week looks back at a lecture I attended this summer where a Cambridge art historian insisted paintings by Stanley Spencer were painted by David Jones. It revealed a weakness that stretches beyond one lecture; how we teach art history is woeful.

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Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 23m

John Nash painted many landscapes around Dorset in the interwar years. He rarely attempted to paint directly from nature, preferring to work in the constant light of his studio from the sketches and watercolours made on the spot. 'Walled Garden, Bredy,' was painted in 1923.

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Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 10h

Very much appreciate your comments, Richard.

Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 11h

One critic, writing in 1911 (the date of this work) commented, George Clausen 'gives us out of very simple elements the most perfect nocturnes, these mark a new and definite advance in his power in taking complete hold of a subject and making it his own.'

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Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 13h

Augusto Giacometti was a member of the Giacometti dynasty of artists and was among the very first painters of the 20thC to venture into non-representational painting. He moved back to figurative painting later in his career. 'Books and Cup,' is from 1940.

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Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 18h

Looking through online auctions, I'm struck by Carl Moll's masterful exploration of flowers, especially dahlias. In this work from 1920s, Moll has accentuated the texture of the petals with different tonalities of white, cream, yellow, and pink to capture light.

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Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 19h

'Portrait of a Girl.' (1904) From early in his career, Ian Strang was recognized as a brilliant draughtsman. He was much admired for his portrait drawings, inspired by those of Hans Holbein in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle.

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Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 23h

This is one of a group of oil sketches associated with John Singer Sargent’s travels to Egypt in 1891; the painting depicts the Mosque of Sulayman Pasha al-Khadim in Cairo’s citadel complex. Built in 1528, it is considered the first Ottoman-style mosques in Egypt.

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Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 1d

In 'The Print,' (1931) Harold Knight depicts his wife Laura holding one of her prints from the pile on the table. Another of her works, 'Circus Dressing Room,' can be seen hanging on the wall behind her as can her reflection in the glass of the frame.

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Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 1d

Through the 1860s, the Florentine critic Diego Martelli had championed the Italian Macchiaioli painters who shared the same principles as the French Impressionists. This portrait of Martelli by Federico Zandomeneghi dates from 1869.

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Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 1d

Thomas Rooke first visited Auxerre, France in 1886, having been sent by John Ruskin to record mediaeval carving and architecture of the city's cathedral. Ruskin later wrote: 'Not since seeing Turner's work has anything given me so much pleasure.'

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Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 2d

'Melun, Daybreak.' (c1860) Henry Mark Anthony was amongst the first artists to introduce plein air painting to England and was hailed as the heir to John Constable. He often used dramatic sunrise and sunset effects and stormy skies and seas as the subjects of his paintings.

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Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 2d

Thanks, Alan

Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 2d

Thomas Dugdale Cantrell's 'The Arrival of the Jarrow Marchers in London,' (1936) depicts the 200 unemployed men who completed a near 300 mile walk to London to protest against the poverty suffered in Jarrow following the closure of its shipyard; the juxtaposition of society.

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Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 2d

'Living room with my sister,' (1847) is one of several Adolph Menzel painted of rooms in his house at 18 Schöneberger Strasse in Berlin - private experiments in capturing different light sources, moonlight, late sun filtered through curtains and in this case, artificial light.

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Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 2d

Good points.

Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 2d

Yes, most likely.

Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 2d

I entirely agree and it happens every day. It's common to have people commenting on pictures using Chatgpt. I was at a party recently where people were texting each other in the next room.

Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 2d

'Our Lady of the Hills.' (1921) The word anathemata, as David Jones unpicks it in his introduction to what later became an epic poem, means a lifting up and a setting apart of something for our particular savouring. A precise reading of what art is and always should be.

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Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 2d

Thank you, I very much appreciate it.

Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 2d

'Senegalese gardener.' (1922) After a successful start to his career in London, Rudolph Ihlee journeyed to Collioure in the Mediterranean, where the 'blond light that suppresses shadows,' had a profound effect on his work as he experimented with a spontaneous style of painting.

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Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 2d

Indeed.

Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 2d

Commonplace at the time sadly. The irony of how we teach art history is that many paintings by women artists (often attributed to men) will continue to be anonymous because there's so few people to recognise their style.

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Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 2d

And a major influence on a young David Hockney as was Sickert for example, still a god well into the 1950s.

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Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 2d

Yes, yet if you ask art history students about Spencer (as I have) the majority would look at you blank and this of one of our most important and original 20thC painters!

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Richard Morris @ahistoryinart.bsky.social · 2d

Very kind of you, Laurie. I know Spencer's work very well and have been fortunate enough to buy several of his paintings and drawings which were unattributed. I got up and left the lecture. I should have stayed but the red mist was coming down.

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