Jun 25, 2020 - Sale 2539

Sale 2539 - Lot 321

Price Realized: $ 4,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
CEDRIC MORRIS
Portrait of Lucian Freud.

Pen and ink on light tan wove paper, circa 1940-45. 355x275 mm; 14x10 7/8 inches.

With—a group of prints by various modern and contemporary artists. Various sizes and conditions.

Ex-collection Milly Hayes, Ipswich, the artist's housekeeper; private collection, London, sold Sotheby's, London, April 1, 2014, lot 212; Abbott and Holder, Ltd., London, with the label; the estate of Matthew Rutenberg, New York.

Morris (1889-1982) was an English landscape and portrait painter, an important art teacher and a central figure among the English modernists, whose friends included fellow artists William Nicholson (1872-1949), Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975, see lots 314 and 315), Paul Nash (1889-1946) and Christopher Wood (1901-1930). Morris and fellow artist Arthur Lett-Haines founded the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing at Dedham in April 1937 and within a year they had 60 students. In 1939, the 19-year-old Lucian Freud (1922-2011, see lot 322) enrolled at the art school and became close with Morris, who painted his portrait in 1941 with his usual scrutinizing style that would in turn become a hallmark of Freud's own work.