Today's subject reminds me of a number of previous artists I have covered, and I think it repeats the problems of being an artist in a society that did not take you seriously. I will be speculating about whether it was the Great War that changed everything for these artists, or was it the change in society, but on the whole I think a big slice of it was because they were women. Please say hello to Geraldine Morris...
The fact that this young lady's photograph appeared in the newspapers should tell you that she was a hot property in September 1901. However, I'm getting ahead of myself, so let's go back to the beginning...
Geraldine was the daughter of the Reverend Ambrose Morris (1837-1908) and Ellen Julius (1849-1941). Ambrose and Ellen married in 1873, and had ten children, seven of which made it to the 20th century. Geraldine was somewhere in the middle, born in the May of 1881 in Charlton in London. Her older surviving siblings, Arthur and Ethel were born while the family was living in Guernsey, and the family does seem to have travelled around with Ambrose's different churches, although by the time that the family was established, they were settled in London. Looking at newspaper reports of Ambrose, he was very active in his work, and when he left a church, people were extremely sad to see him go and he received presentations and testimonies. Also, as a family, they were comparatively wealthy as I see by the 1891 census where they had a nursery governess, a housemaid and a cook all living at St Thomas' Rectory. Between the 1891 census and 1901 census, the family moved to Wythall, 7 miles south of Birmingham, and that's when the fun begins...
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| Illustration from Songs of Innocence |
I'm guessing that the family moved to Wythall by the time Geraldine was in her mid teens, as she started at the Birmingham Municipal School of Art in 1897 (grateful thanks to Sally Hoban for the dates) and stayed there until 1907, when she was 25. During that time, she was remarkable. Starting in 1900, the Lord Mayor of Birmingham chose Geraldine's design for his Christmas card for that year. The following year, she produced beautiful illustrations for the Flowers of Parnassus edition of William Blakes' Songs of Innocence (in the same series as Percy Bulcock's Tennyson). The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art described it as 'prettily illustrated' although suffering in comparison with Blake's own genius. Mind you, Geraldine was only 20, and I have to admit her illustrations remind me of Kate Bunce's illustration for Fairbrass (1895) with a bit of Burne-Jones/Rossetti lobbed in for good measure.
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| Kate Bunce's illustration for comparison. The horror. |
What is for definite is that Geraldine is more Pre-Raphaelite-Adjacent in her illustration than Miss Bunce, who oddly seems to verge closer to stained glass design. Part of me wonders if that was so readers could colour their own books in and make their own colour editions. If you look at Percy Bulcock's Tennyson, his pictures are far darker, but even then someone had coloured in the edition I bought. The same is true of Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale's editions of poems where they produced a black and white and colour edition (for different prices, obviously). I would argue the black and white is far more aesthetically pleasing, but I would say that as I own it.
Also in 1901, Geraldine won the gold medal at South Kensington for this stained glass window design...
Apologies for the reproduction quality throughout this piece but I had to rummage through all sorts on on-line scans to find Geraldine's work. This was from an article in the Ladies Field from September 1901, which also contained the photograph at the top. It reported that Geraldine also submitted four smaller panels that represented the winds which were subsequently purchased by the Government Board of Education for £7/7s. I see another student submitting noteworthy stained glass designs was May Cooksey. Geraldine also carried away the Princess of Wales Scholarship of £25 and was definitely the toast of the awards, also having also gained a bronze medal for another card design, described by Walter Crane as charming in concept and tastefully rendered.
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| Geraldine's work from 1902 |
In 1902, the student's work from the 1901 South Kensington competition went on display in a touring exhibition. The Belfast Morning News exclaimed that Miss Morris showed 'traces of positive genius,' however comments on her silver medal-winning work from the 1902 competition was less pleasant. The Ladies Field, who had hailed her the year before, said this about her piece, 'Hereward the Wake' -
'Miss Morris has evidently been influenced by the Burne-Jones tradition and her men are as effeminate as those of the modern follower of Botticelli. Her 'Hereward the Wake' who should be a model of masculine strength and vigour, is a gentle, harmless person of the type of Burne-Jones's "lady-like" St George. Nevertheless there are some good qualities in Miss Morris's work, and possibly greater strength and emancipation from the Burne-Jones influence will come with time.'
Rude. That all reminds me of how MP Willie Bridgeman claimed that Burne-Jones' Persius cycle made him gay, or something. I am all links today! So much of what I have written in the past is definitely coming back to haunt me today. The Magazine of Art also had criticisms of her work, despite calling her book illustration (seen above) 'excellent' - 'the artist through relying too much on the same faculty of imagination, has miscalculated the proper relative sizes of the figures in the foreground, distance and middle distances.' Anyway, also in 1902, Geraldine and her maternal aunt Katie Julius set off for three months to visit art galleries and museums in Northern Italy, which was reported in Julius Jottings, a publication which seems to have been a round-robin mascarading as a journal, all about the achievements of the Julius family. How marvellously insufferable.
In 1903, Geraldine took a silver medal at the competition for her designs for an overmantle and piano front, but there seem to be no details of the theme or whether they made any of the critics question their sexuality. 1904 saw yet another Christmas card designed by Geraldine used by the Mayor and Mayoress of Birmingham. She also won a bronze medal for stained glass design, but nothing much was said about her work and she just gets lost among all the names of the young lady artists. I did see a note of interest in one newspaper about exactly how many of the medal winners were women, who were slowly becoming the majority.
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| From a series based on Mallory's Morte d'Arthur (1907) |
We have to skip to 1907 for Geraldine's come back and another gold medal and scholarship for her last year at Birmingham Art School. Her gold medal was awarded for the complete series of illustrations based on Mallory's Morte d'Arthur (on a Pre-Raphaelite bingo card, that has to be one of the boxes). The East Anglian Daily Times praised her 'harmoniously blended colours' on the finished design on an enamelled panel. As I have found a number of her illustrations but none of the finished panel that apparently came from them, I'm not sure which one was the panel. Maybe all of them? That would be worth a gold medal, certainly. Here's some more...
...and a triple bill...
I can definitely see the Burne-Jones effect, maybe with a bit of Spencer Stanhope or Strudwick.
Around this time, Geraldine seems to have become part of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society (ACES) and started to exhibited in their shows at the Grafton Gallery in Mayfair, London. I wonder if this was a move to leave her work as a 'student' behind and set up as a 'practitioner' in a separate sphere. She set up premises and a studio in Newhall Street in Birmingham (as listed in Kelly's Directory) and exhibited at ACES things as diverse as an enamelled alms box, necklaces and pendants and designs for stained glass, all of which were for sale. She was mentioned in foreign press - American Art News specifically praised her metal work in their review of the ACES 1910 exhibition.
In 1911 she exhibited at the London Salon of the Allied Artists Association Ltd show with a case of jewellery (in conjunction with Winifred Palmer), an enamel panel "Men, Angels, Devils" The Preaching of St Francis and an enamel portrait of Louis, son of Rev Joseph Hooper Maude. I was very interested in the enamel portrait of Louis Maude who would have been around 18 or 19 at the time. As fate would have it, Louis went off to France in 1914 with the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry as a 2nd Lieutenant and died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1st July 1916.
Also in 1911 Miss G Morris of 45 Newhall Street Birmingham had an enamel panel accepted for the Royal Academy, entitled Young Sir Tristram Besought His Father for the Life of His Cruel Stepmother. As this also seems to have been taken from Malory, I wonder if this was the panel she won the gold medal for in 1907. She was also teaching enamelling, metal-work and jewellery at the Art School in Leamington Spa, teaching little prize winners in other categories. That's when it all went wrong. Geraldine got married.
Now, I'm being unfair, but nothing seems to perversely sound the death knell to a woman's art career like a comfortable marriage. I think expectations changed, possibly even the priorities that the women themselves felt changed, and this is reflected in the language that surrounds such marriages. In June 1912, 31 year old Geraldine married 57 year old Arthur Ernest Hopkins. Arthur was previously married to Elizabeth Ann Dalby in 1879 (two years before Geraldine was born, ouch) and the couple had two sons Arthur and Henry, who were around the same age as their new Step-Mum. Also, Elizabeth died in the June of 1911, so that was a busy 12 months...
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| From Songs of Innocence |
Arthur was big in Chesterfield, if you excuse the expression, having been Registrar, High Bailiff and Mayor, not to mention any number of other very respectable posts, so the wedding was reported in detail in the local press. The Alcester Chronicle reported on her ivory satin dress, with a bodice of Japanese silk embroidery, her large hat with ostrich plumes and her veil of Limerick lace that had belonged to her mother. Her bridesmaids were dressed in white with rose-coloured scarves and, as her father had died in 1908, she was given away by her brother, Rev Arthur Julius Morris and her mother. Their reception was held at Abbey Hill Lodge, then the couple left in 'a motor' for their honeymoon in Derbyshire. My snarkiness over the speed and age gap aside, my problem with the wedding is actually the reporting, as the newspapers wrote: 'Before her marriage Miss Geraldine Morris was known as an artist of great promise and ability.' I might be reading too much into that but it sounds like 'that's nice, but she doesn't really have to do that any more because, lucky her, she's finally got married!' There is a great amount written in the same article about her work, seen in churches in Wythall, Weston-Super-Mare and all over the world including New Zealand and Australia, Norway and Germany. It also mentions that the couple's home in Walton was kitted out with a studio, but I don't think it is much of a surprise that she never reached the heights of fame again. The 1921 census found the couple living at 104 Ashgate Road, Chesterfield with their servant, the glorously-named Elsie Pitchfork. Geraldine's occupation was recorded as 'home duties.'
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| From Songs of Innocence |
The next time Geraldine seems to have figured in the news was the death of her husband in 1925. He had been ill for some years and was living at Smedley's Hydro at Matlock where he died of pneumonia. His obituary spoke of his charm, personality and intelligence and the great blow of the death of his first wife. Geraldine moved back to Leamington Spa and was living there at the time of the 1939 register, living as an invalid with her mother Ellen and sister Ethel. She died in 1947 after 13 years of illness 'patiently borne', leaving over £10,000 and absolutely no artistic legacy. I was reminded of Meave Doggett (last link, I promise) who also gave it all up after the First World War to become a nurse and seemingly had no artistic output after (on the public stage at least). I think the fact that none of Geraldine's work seems to exist in public collections (again, at least as far as has been made digital) means that no-one is looking for her. Her work was in enamel and metal-work rather than painting, again knocking her down the ladder of artistic importance, yet for the first decade of the twentieth century Geraldine was an absolute superstar. Her work must exist somewhere and so if you own any of her work, please send me images. You know I always call for a retrospective, but the young women of Art Schools and the Arts and Crafts movement are an untapped source, filled with optimism, Pre-Raphaelitism and all things beautiful. I think we could all do with a bit of that right now.
