The Blue Poppy of 1932 by Cedric Morris epitomises the bold and beautiful flower still life paintings on which his reputation as one of the leading British artists of the twentieth century is founded. Moreover, it was created during an exceptional period in his career and was acquired from Morris by his friend, the advertising executive and renowned collector Robert ‘Bobby’ Bevan and has remained in his family ever since.
Having made his name in the avant-garde art world of 1920s London, Morris later recalled ‘there was too much of a social whirl, I couldn’t get any work done and there weren’t any landscapes out of the window’ (as quoted by Hugh St Clair in A Lesson in Art & Life,2023, p.62).
In 1929 he and his partner, the artist Arthur Lett-Haines, decided to rent The Pound, a farmhouse in Higham, Suffolk ‘with a view down the valley through ancient trees towards the River Stour…[with]…the possibility of making a beautiful, romantic garden where woodcock swooped in winter and nightingales sang on summer evenings’ (St Clair, op.cit., p.63). Indeed, it was during his eleven years at The Pound that Morris emerged as a plantsman of distinction amidst ‘The Pound’s unusual combination, in the 1930s, of idyll with hard work and exuberant entertainment’ (Richard Morphet, Cedric Morris, 1984, p.48).
