Description
Greenery
a Morris and Company tapestry designed by John Henry Dearle, 1892,
woven in coloured wools and mohair by John Martin and William Sleath, with a pear, a sweet chestnut and an oak tree within a woodland glade and with rabbits, a fox, and fallow deer and in the foreground with mille-fleurs, the trees woven with banners bearing the inscriptions
By woodsmans edge I faint and fail, by craftsmans edge I tell the tale.
High in the wood, high oer the hall, aloft I rise, when low I fall.
Unmoved I stand what wind may blow, swift swift before the wind I go.
217cm high, 461cm wide (approx.)
Provenance: The Hon. Percy Scawen Wyndham, Clouds, East Knoyle, Wiltshire Morris & Company Mrs. Lucius Gubbins and by descent Exhibited: Crathes Castle, Aberdeenshire, Scotland 1970-2003 Bibliography: The Art Journal, 1905, A Disciple of William Morris by pp. 85-89 History of the Merton Abbey Tapestry Works, Founded by William Morris, by H.C. Marillier, pub. London 1927, Metropolitan Museum Bulletin, Volume 5, 1947, illus. p. 233 Country Life, November 19th, 1904, Clouds, Salisbury : The residence of The Hon Mrs, Percy Wyndham by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, pp. 738-748, illus p. 747, of Volume XVI, July-December 1904. Contents of Clouds, Auction catalogue, Knight, Frank & Rutley, June 20th, 1933. William Morris Textiles, by Linda Parry, pub. New York 1983, pp. 120-122 & 141 illus. p.121 & 141. Clouds; The Biography of a Country House, by Caroline Dakers, published Yale University Press, 1993, pp 90-91, illus. p. 89. Note: The Hon. Percy Wyndham, and his wife Madeline were at the centre of a Society group formed in the 1880s, known as the Souls who were renowned amongst the British aristocracy for their intellect and culture. One of the painters who was closest to them was Edward Burne -Jones, who also worked for other members of the group including Arthur Balfour, Lady Windsor, Lady Horner and George and Rosalind Howard, and was often invited to their house parties both in London and in the country. Other invitees included James Whistler whose Nocturne: Grey and Gold - Westminster Bridge they once owned as well as Henry James, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Rudyard Kipling and Lord Alfred Douglas, amongst many others. The Countess of Warwick wrote about the Souls: This little coterie of Souls loved literature and art, and perhaps were more pagan than soulful. The Wyndhams were very familiar with the work of the architect and designer Philip Webb and with William Morris and his company, and indeed many of their group had used their services. It is little surprise then that in 1876 Webb was commissioned by them to design and build their new house Clouds at East Knoyle, near Salisbury, Wiltshire. The house would turn out to be the largest and most expensive to be undertaken by the architect and the interiors were to be supplied by Morris and Co. Work started in 1881 and the Wyndhams were able to move in on 23rd September 1885. Their stay was to be short lived however as on the evening of January 6th 1889 a maid left a lighted candle in a cupboard and the entire building was gutted by fire. Although dismayed by these events the Wyndhams were determined to re- build the house. The estimate for re-building was £26,741, 17 shillings from which Philip Webb was paid a fee of £900 and which the insurance more than covered. The second phase was finally completed by August 1891. At the centre of the new house was the spacious top-lit hall which was the main thoroughfare on the ground floor - all the main reception rooms ran off this room. Madeline Wyndham intended the room to have very little decoration. On the floor was a Holland Park carpet by Morris & Co. All the furniture was upholstered in Morris Honeysuckle design and their Peacock and Dragon curtains hung over the windows and doors (a pair now hangs in the British Galleries of the Victoria and Albert Museum T.64-1933). Four black lacquer cabinets around the walls completed the Aesthetic interior and two tapestries adorned the bare stone walls, one a Flemish hunting scene, the other Greenery by Morris & Co. Greenery was commissioned in 1892, however not before designs for two other tapestries had been tried first. William Morris first visited Clouds on 4th October 1896 to discuss designs for carpets, curtains, chair coverings and tapestries. He produced the design for the Forest tapestry, with animals designed by Philip Webb and foreground details by J.H.Dearle. The proportions were deemed unsuitable for the hall however the tapestry was still woven and then sold to Alexander Ionides. The next tapestry suggested was the Orchard, woven in 1890 from an earlier design by Morris for Jesus Chapel, Cambridge with background details by J.H.Dearle. Again this proved to be unsuitable and this tapestry was sold to the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 1892 William Morris wrote to the Wyndhams; I shall be very pleased both to see Clouds House again, and to arrange about the tapestry, and am sure that it would be better to have a piece done which was made specially for the place it is to occupy. The outcome of this meeting was that Greenery was commissioned from the firm. Designed entirely by John Henry Dearle and incorporating the poem The Forest from Verses for Pictures which Morris had written as part of his series Poems by the Way in 1891. Dearle was by this time the chief designer at Morris & Co. and the disciple of William Morris. He had been involved with the production of tapestries at Merton Abbey from its inception in 1884 and was, from 1887, involved with every tapestry woven there until his death in 1932. Dearles strength as a designer lay in his verdure designs and the tapestry offered for sale here is credited by Linda Parry (see bibliography) to be his finest work. Lewis F. Day writing in 1905 states; background, foreground, flowers and ornament, colour even, were details which in his (Burne-Jones) designs for the firm the painter left, strange to say, to his friend Morris, and which Morris gradually came to leave in the hands of a pupil whose work it would be hard to distinguish from his own. This equates with the view that Morris, having mastered a technique would then gradually pass these skills on in order to pursue other interests. Day further states; Morris was not a man to plume himself with feathers which did not belong to him; but neither was he one to bother himself about doing what someone else could do equally well for him; and it was only natural that he should depend more and more upon the assistance of a pupil who entered so entirely into his spirit, that he could be relied upon to do much what he himself might have done. After Percy Wyndhams death in 1911 the estate passed to his son George who died suddenly in 1913. The estate then passed to his son Percy Lyulph Wyndham, known as Perf but when he was killed in the First World War in 1914 it passed to his cousin Guy Richard Wyndham, known as Dick. Dick Wyndham continued to live in the house after Madeline Wyndham died in 1920 but by the 1930s the house had become a white elephant. In June 1933 Knight, Frank and Rutley offered the contents for sale by auction. Greenery was pictured (with wefts showing) on the frontispiece and was offered as lot 59, A Morris verdure tapestry, with deer fox and rabbits, 7ft by 15ft 6. The tapestry was sold to Morris & Co for £150 guineas. Also from the hall was Lot 11, the Morris carpet, which sold for 11guineas and Lot 62 A pair of Morris & Co Tapestry Curtains which sold for 7 guineas. Both were also sold back to Morris & Co. Afterwards Morris & Co. sold the tapestry to Mrs Lucius Gubbins for 250 guineas. Mrs Gubbins was a great patron of Morris & Co. She was born Etta May Gibson in 1871 in New Zealand. In 1909 she married in Ireland Lucius Gubbins who had served with the 13th Hussars in the South African War before retiring from the army in 1905. After the First World War they settled in Eastbourne where one of Mrs Gubbins passions was decorating her large house in Blackwater Road using William Morris furnishings. Mrs Gubbins died in 1955 but the tapestry offered here has remained in her family since then. In recent times it has been exhibited at Crathes Castle, Banchory, Scotland. Another version of this tapestry was woven in 1915 and given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1923 by Edward C. Moore, a director and Chief Designer at Tiffany & Co.
