At The Fine Sale on 6th December, we will be offering a very special portrait of Sir John Morris, the First Baronet of Clasemont, an ancestor of artist and plantsman, Sir Cedric Morris. Sir John Morris, who lived from 1745 – 1819, was a British industrialist, and a central figure in the mining and copper-smelting business in Swansea, South Wales. He married in 1774, and his sister, Margaret Morris, was one of the three founders of the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. With art running through the veins of the family, some hundred years later, Cedric Lockwood Morris was born in Swansea, and would go on to be one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century.
Sir John Morris, by John Hoppner, RA
Not only are the sitter’s links to Cedric Morris and his industrial background fascinating, but this captivating portrait is also widely viewed as one of John Hoppner’s most accomplished. Hoppner was a well-known English portrait painter, who was perceived as a brilliant colourist. He was born the son of German parents, in Whitechapel, London and his mother was one of the attendants at the Royal Palace, then ruled by King George II. He trained as a chorister at the Chapel Royal at St James Place, and later George III would go on to pay for Hoppner to study at the Royal Academy, such was patronage from the king that rumours flew that he could have been his illegitimate son. By 1789 Hoppner was appointed as portrait painter to the Prince of Wales and would go on to be one of the leading portrait painters in society circles, alongside Lawrence and Raeburn. Heavily influenced by Reynolds, many of Hoppner’s works are held in some of the greatest institutions around the world, including at the V&A.
The joy of this painting in particular is its charming and sympathetic depiction of the sitter, and at the time, the picture was considered accomplished enough to have been exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1797. Hoppner’s ability to capture a likeness is plain to see here, as was his talent as a colourist, with the skin tones throughout the face giving just a glimpse of his gift in portraiture. Referred to as a ‘most excellent and much-admired portrait’ in John Hoppner’s catalogue raisonne, the picture has been consigned from a private collector, having been bought at Christie’s in 1938. We will now be offering it with an estimate of £7,000-10,000 and it will offer fans of Georgian portraiture the opportunity to buy a work from one of the period’s most respected painters, with the added cache of it having a link to Sir Cedric Morris, whose own work is seeing a significant resurgence in popularity.
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