When we think of Cedric Morris, what comes to mind is a vivid palette: unruly irises such as Iris Seedlings (1943) and landscapes infused with lyrical distortion like Llanmadoc Hill, Gower (1928).
Renowned as a colourist and an 'artist-plantsman' Morris's reputation in modern British art is often rooted in the natural world. So what are we to make of his evocative café scenes and sketchy depictions of the bohemian life of 1920s Montparnasse? Where do these raw, intimate drawings fit within his wider body of work?
Born in 1889 in Swansea, South Wales, Morris came from a prominent copper-smelting family and would later inherit the family baronetcy. Yet his path never followed convention. After an unsuccessful attempt to enlist for military service, Morris spent time farming in Canada, pot washing in New York and studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London, before recognising that his true passion and talent lay in art. He first enrolled at the Académie Delécluse in Paris in 1914, though the outbreak of war cut this first Parisian chapter short.
In 1918, on Armistice Day, Morris met Arthur Lett-Haines at a party in Chelsea, London. The connection was instant, and the two became life partners in both love and art. Initially planning to emigrate to America, they instead settled briefly in Cornwall before relocating to Paris in 1920.
The city offered greater artistic and personal freedoms for the couple. In Montparnasse, then the beating heart of international modernism, they became part of a vibrant circle that included Fernand Léger, Man Ray, Ezra Pound and Ernest Hemingway. Their studio at the Académie Delécluse doubled as a salon, and as Lett later recalled, it hosted 'many gay parties of the period.'
Morris's drawings from this period mark a shift toward formal experimentation, both in style and subject, as he became increasingly drawn to the interior life of cafés like Rotonde and du Dôme. These pencil and ink works show a departure from the earlier disciplined still lifes, such as Still Life, Newlyn I.
Once hailed as 'the Cézanne of Newlyn,' his Paris work moved toward a looser, more exploratory line.
Café Rotonde (1921) reveals this development. Sketched in the iconic Montparnasse café frequented by Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Peggy Guggenheim, and the wider avant-garde, Morris captured the energy of the scene through structural diagonals and bouncing chair backs.
His textured pencil marks and overlapping geometries depart from naturalism, articulating a more mood-driven design. Like the Cubists, Morris fractured the café interior into shifting planes and unstable lines. As Meyer Schapiro noted, modern form is shaped by 'the momentary position of the casual or mobile spectator.' Morris embraced subjectivity, using his drawing as a spontaneous mode to capture the atmosphere of Café Rotonde.
Like the Impressionists before him, who embodied the role of the flâneur, Morris found inspiration in Parisian café life, with its fleeting moments, informal sociability and blurred boundaries between public and private spheres. In this sense, Walter Benjamin's description of the flâneur applies: Morris was as 'at home among the façades of houses as a citizen in his four walls.'
The drawing's tonal contrasts and experimental perspective signal the start of Morris's most exploratory phase. 'I obtain line for line's sake, colour for colour's sake, form for form's sake. Realism is not Reality' he would later write. In a painted version of the same cafe, Morris builds on the drawing's rhythmic construction with a more populated, psychologically heightened composition.
Among the central figures is a woman reminiscent of Jane Avril, the iconic dancer and muse of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, as seen in Jane Avril in the Entrance to the Moulin Rouge, Putting on her Gloves (c.1892).
Jane Avril in the Entrance to the Moulin Rouge, Putting on her Gloves
c.1892
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) 
Other works from this period show a similar focus. In Lett-Haines in Paris (1921), Morris depicts his partner with a direct simplicity that is both intimate and unsentimental. The compact framing of the composition creates vitality and impact, while flattening the perspective and simplifying the forms shows influences of both Cubism and the psychological realism of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity).
Lett's steady gaze anchors the viewer, while hatched pencil lines construct the surrounding café interior with its stocked bar and arabesque wooden panels, adding dynamism to the scene. The tonal textures demonstrate Morris's sensitivity to evoke inner feeling and atmosphere. As he stated, 'a realistic picture... does not necessarily give you the most vivid impression of its character.'
Aligned with modernism's interest in urban types and the edges of respectability, Morris engaged with the subject of A Male and Female Prostitute, Paris (1921).
He places his figures centrally in a bustling café scene, presenting them with an unpretentious, straightforward presence. Their expressions verge on caricature, but they are not sensationalised. Rather than marginalising them visually or morally, Morris integrates the pair into the fabric of the composition.
This contrasts with Russian Refugees in Paris from 1921, where the backs of this group are turned away from the viewer. Their silhouettes are tightly knit, drawn with overlapping shapes.
Morris, ever the observer, conveys emotion not through faces but through posture, gesture, and density of line, demonstrating his understanding of draughtsmanship. Camaraderie exists within the group's circle, closed off from the surrounding cafe. Drawn after the 1917 Russian Revolution, when Paris became a centre for displaced émigrés and artistic exile, the work reflects both the refugees' separation and their solidarity.
A few years later, his line became more distilled. In Three Russians (1923), the figures are rendered through singular, rhythmic marks.
Similarly, in Café du Dôme (1924), we see what Morris called 'an organised and vital drawing,' built through 'lines that can sustain the rhythm.'
Around this time, he also embarked on his Experiments in Texture paintings, animating the surface with impasto and varied colour handling. Drawing, by comparison, became a space to pursue what he described as 'maximum expression' through minimal means.
Morris's café drawings are key to understanding the evolution of his distinctive visual language. The tactile, essential, organic lines that characterise his 1920s Paris work prefigure the spatial rhythms of his later flower paintings and landscapes. In works like Lett-Haines in Paris (1921), the directness and psychological nuance anticipate the portraiture of his later career, including that of his future pupil, Lucian Freud (1941).
By the time Morris and Lett-Haines returned to London in early 1927, Morris's style had matured and was gaining wider recognition. This trajectory culminated in the founding of the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in 1937.
Inspired by the 'cours libre' model they had experienced in Paris, the school became a haven for experimentation and personal expression. Attracting students like Lucian Freud and Maggi Hambling, who later recalled the experience as 'refreshingly uninhibited,' and marked by a 'freedom and openness of everything' respectively. The bohemian spirit Morris experienced in interwar Paris remained central to both his artistic practice and teaching, securing his lasting influence on British modernism.
Rosalie Clement Hennion, art historian and writer
This content was funded by the Bridget Riley Art Foundation
Further reading
T. J. Clark, The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers, Princeton University Press, 1989
Stephen F. Eisenman (ed.), Nineteenth Century Art: A Critical History, 3rd ed., Thames & Hudson, 2007
Gainsborough's House: Cedric Morris Collection Database
Tania Kovats (ed.), The Drawing Book: A Survey of Drawing – The Primary Means of Expression, Black Dog Publishing, 2007
Richard Morphet, Cedric Morris, Tate Publishing, 1984
Hugh St Clair, A Lesson in Art and Life: The Colourful World of Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines, Pimpernel Press, 2019
