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GLYN MORGAN
Landscape Images

Private View Saturday 26th April 2008 noon - 5.00pm
Wine served - All Works for Sale
Exibition Finishes Sunday 18th May 2008

Where enquiries of prices are made on the gallery, the work is subject to availability and the price to change.


Dark Tree, oil on canvas 61 x 122 cms

         

Dark Tree 2007
Oil on canvas
61x122 cms
 

 

I first encountered Glyn Morgan’s paintings whilst helping to organise the exhibition Cedric Morris and Lett Haines: Teaching, Art and Life which opened at Norwich Castle in 2002. The exhibition presented work by Cedric Morris and his partner Lett Haines, alongside paintings by leading students of the East Anglia School of Painting and Drawing (EASPD) – a wonderfully idiosyncratic art school that they established in 1937. The unique environment created by Haines and Morris at the EASPD nurtured and influenced the life and work of an important group of artists including David Carr, Lucian Freud, Lucy Harwood, Maggi Hambling, and of course Glyn Morgan.

Morgan first met Morris in 1943 whilst he was still a student at Cardiff School of Art. He was invited to Benton End to attend the EASPD the following year. Whilst he benefited from the formal training at Cardiff – in particular the importance of draughtsmanship that he learnt from his inspirational tutor Ceri Richards – little can have prepared him for the unique atmosphere of Benton End. Here formal training was eschewed in favour of advice, encouragement and the creation of an environment where art was an integral part of life. As another student Esther Grainger remarked, the school was ‘The place where only painting mattered; where almost everything else was a joke. A school for more than painting; a world, a sort of family, created warmed and lit by Cedric and Lett.’

One important lesson Morgan did learn from Morris was the importance of colour. Both artists share an often unconventional, yet highly accomplished sense of colour. Morris remarked to Morgan ‘You have a disgraceful sense of colour, therefore you might become an artist’ and Morgan later returned the compliment describing Morris as ‘one of the great colourists of the century’. Although Morgan’s early work was influenced by Morris he soon established his own identity as an artist. If asked to characterise his considerable achievements of over six decades of painting, I would point to the rich tradition of visionary landscape painting that has been such an important strand in the history of British art. In common with Samuel Palmer, Paul Nash and Graham Sutherland, Morgan’s engagement with landscape transcends the particulars of place. His paintings invoke the mysterious and spiritual qualities of nature that have enticed painters and poets into the romantic tradition since the eighteenth century.

In the new paintings featured in this exhibition these qualities come to the fore. Blodeuwedd Landscape is one of a series inspired by a traditional Celtic legend. The maiden Blodeuwedd, created from flowers, is represented metamorphosing into an owl as punishment for her infidelity. In Procession the mushrooms, perhaps influenced by Morris’ wonderful ‘recipe still-lives’, are imbued with a mysterious, almost sinister presence in the landscape. These visionary qualities have also been explored in work in collage and mixed media such as the impressive Landscape with Owl 2. The mysterious light that illuminates this scene is a recurring motif in Morgan’s work. It places him and secures his place within the visionary tradition of British art.

Nicholas Thornton
Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery

 

GLYN MORGAN


EXHIBITIONS SINCE 1969
1969
Drian Galleries, London
1971
The Minories, Colchester
1973
Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburghn
1974
Gardner Arts Centre, University of Sussex
1978
Gilbert-Parr Gallery, London
1980
Gilbert-Parr Gallery, London
1981
The Minories, Colchester (Retrospective)
1982, 83
Alwin Gallery London
1985
Archway Gallery, Houston, Texas
1986
Taliesin Arts Centre, University of Swansea (Retrospective)
1990
Quay Gallery, Sudbury, Suffolk
1991
Chappel Galleries, Essex: Portraits of Gaia and Other Paintings
1994
Chappel Galleries, Essex: Master and Pupil, Cedric Morris and Glyn Morgan
1995
Simon Carter Gallery, Woodbridge: Glyn Morgan. A Fifty Year Retrospective.
1996
Chappel Galleries, Essex: “The Green Man”, 70th birthday celebration, Oriel Llundain, London, Glyn Morgan – Fifty Years
1997
Glyn Morgan – Fifty Years, Rhondda Heritage Park Y Tabernacl (Museum of Modern Art, Wales) Retrospective
1998
Chappel Galleries, Essex: The Observant Eye: Botanical and Other Watercolours Brecknock Museum & Gallery, Brecon (Retrospective).
John Russell Gallery, Ipswich
2001
Chappel Galleries, Essex
2004
Chappel Galleries, Essex: 75th Anniversary Exhibition The Song of the Earth.
Selected Paintings, Martin Tinney Galery, Cardiff.
2006
National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth: Retrospective
Chappel Galleries, Essex: Retrospective 80th
 
GROUP EXHIBITIONS (excluding local exhibitions)
1952
Edinburgh Festival
1955
Contemporary Welsh Painting and Sculpture, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff
1956
Festival of Wales
1962
Leicester Galleries, London
1968
Canaletto Gallery, London
1969
Recording Wales (Welsh Arts Council)
1970
John Whibley Gallery, London
1975
Alwin Gallery, London
1976
Gilbert-Parr Gallery, London
Oriel, Cardiff (Welsh Arts Council)
1978
The Oxford Gallery
1986
Invited Artists Exhibition, Oriel, Cardiff (Welsh Arts Council)
1987
Royal Academy, London
1988
Royal Academy, London
Manchester Academy of Fine Art, Open Exhibition
Royal Horticultural Society, London
Society of Botanical Artists, London
Royal Society of Marine Artists, London
1989
Society of Botanical Artists, London
Four Painters and a Sculptor from Benton
End, Bury St. Edmunds Art Gallery
Art Expo, New York
Royal Horticultural Society
1990
The Broad Horizon, Agnews, London
(National Trust)
Society of Botanical Artists, London
1991
Society of Botanical Artists, London
1992
Hallam Gallery, London
1993
Woburn Festival, High Wycombe
1995
Welsh Contemporaries, Oriel Llundain, London
1996
Colchester Art Society – Fifty Years, Chappel Galleries, Essex
1996
Aldeburgh Festival Society of Botanical Artists, London
1999
Fifty Years of the Welsh Group, National Gallery, London
2002, 03
Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery touring to National Museum and Gallery, Cardiff: “Cedric Morris and Lett Haines;
Teaching, Art and Life; with David Carr, Lucian Freud, Maggi Hambling, Lucy Harwood, Frances Hodgkins, Glyn Morgan
 
COLLECTIONS
Derbyshire, Monmouthshire, Oxford and West Riding Education Committees, Auckland and Brisbane City Art Galleries, Contemporary Art Society for Wales, Arts Council for Wales, the Crane Kalman Gallery, the Wertheim Collection, Ipswich Museum and Art Gallery, Newport Museum and Art Gallery, Brecon Museum and Art Gallery, the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery Swansea, and National Library of Wales (Gifts of the Arts Council for Wales); University of Essex: ‘Portrait of Ronald Blythe’ 2002 and private collections in Britain, France, Italy, Germany, China and the U.S.A.
 
1942-44
Art School Cardiff
1947-48
Art School Camberwell
1951
Working in Paris
1955
Cheltenham Hotel mural commission
1968
Goldsmiths’ Company Fellowship to work and study in Crete
1972
Lecturing during summer at Aegina Art Centre, Greece
1985
Organised and presented “The Benton End Circle”, an exhibition of more than 40 years’ work by students of Cedric Morris and Lett-Haines at Bury St. Edmunds Art Gallery
1988-89
Member of the Society of Botanical Artists
2002
Cedric Morris Anniversary Lecture, Glynn Vivian Museum, Swansea
2002, 03
Lectures on Cedric Morris at various venues, including Norwich Castle and the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff
   

 
 
 
 
 
 
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