I have a new third cousin; an excuse to look for a postcard to send to his mother. To digress, his first name is Robert. In my quest I came across Wartime Garden painted by Cedric Morris in the Second World War.
He is pretty well known but I’m ashamed to say I’d didn’t know much about a man at the kernel of British culture. He taught Lucien Freud and Maggi Hambling when he wasn’t painting, was a gardener and very much part of the the 20th century artistic establishment. And he liked birds as this portrait suggests.
Frances Hodgkins painted this in 1930 and it suggests his affection for macaws and men. In 1942 Cedric Morris painted this. It is hard to believe it was in 1942 and was by the same man who painted Wartime Garden.
It is fresh as paint. Unfortunately, like many other bequests, it is not to be seen and has joined the Tate’s collection in storage but merits an entry on the gallery’s website.
“In Peregrine Falcons, Morris does not attempt to record the exact physical detail of the birds or their surroundings. Instead he presents them in a slightly formalised and simplified manner, the intention of which is, in his own words, to ‘provoke a lively sympathy with the mood of the birds which ornithological exactitude may tend to destroy”. (Tate website)
Surely a first cousin twice removed and a third cousin to your grandchildren ?
Thank you, you are right. I always muddle up how cousins work.