Cedric Morris was a highly prolific painter and traveller. During
his career, which spanned more than six decades, he painted many works whilst
abroad in Europe and Northern Africa. These, alongside the numerous travel
letters he sent to his lifelong partner Arthur Lett-Haines (1894-1978), provide
the viewer with an intimate glimpse into Morris’ movements and the subjects
that inspired him along the way. Morris and Lett, as he was known throughout
his life, would often travel apart both writing to the other when they reached
their destinations describing in detail the exotic locations and plans when
there.

This work, executed in 1926, was completed at a point in Morris’
career when he was experiencing a great deal of critical and commercial
success. Represented by Arthur Tooth & Sons Dealership in London he was
fast becoming one of the most recognisable and revered Modern British Painters.
Among other things this provided Morris with the means to travel as frequently
as he liked, often bringing paintings and foreign plant seeds back with him. Morris was, in many respects, as avid a
gardener as he was an artist. Preferring to be known as an ‘Artist Plantsman’
Morris’ flower paintings are, in essence, extensions of his lifelong affinity
with plants. Naturally inquisitive and exploratory in nature, Morris obtained
an extensive knowledge of propagation through his gardening activities
subsequently becoming famous for breeding legions of exotic varieties of Irises
(a flower not commonly planted in England at the time). It is through the forms
and colours of plants that Morris primarily interpreted landscape when abroad.

Morris consistently
travelled to Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria during the latter half of the 1920s. Pays du Lotophages was painted on the
tranquil and historically rich Island of Djerba off the coast of Tunisia. This
painting, until recently had been titled Olive
Trees, however, research has uncovered the original title of the work which
when translated from the French means Land
of the Lotus Eaters The land of the lotus eaters derives from Homeric
Greek mythology and has long been ascribed to the island of Djerba. However, despite painting the work here
Morris avoids direct association with mythological antiquity by choosing to
depict olive trees and not the lotus plant with which the island has been
traditionally associated.

The
clearly identifiable species of true date palm Phoenix Dactylifera which are identified by their palm trunk and
sprouting green leaves. This species of palm is only found in or near North
Africa. The ornamental date palm Phoenix
Canariensis is more commonly found in Europe and therefore this distinction
is useful in reinforcing the sense of location in this particular work. In
addition to this Morris depicts Populus
Alba (more commonly known as silver poplar), which is a species of tree native to the Iberian Peninsula,
Tunisia and Morocco. This provides a further indication that Morris would have
painted this work during one of his many trips to northern Africa in the 1920s.
Morris slightly exaggerates the colours in this work to heighten the sense of
vibrancy in an otherwise scorched and arid landscape. The Olive trees have been
painted as if parched by the sun indicated by Morris’ use of purple and white
as opposed to green and brown which would have been more expected.

It is the colour and
perspective that drive this work. Morris reinforces the sense of foreground,
middle and backgrounds to great effect by emphasising the inclined slopes of
the flanking hill either side of the olive trees. In this respect, Morris
harmonises perspective, composition and colour perfectly. In many ways this
work closely resembles Olive Trees with
Yellow Sky and Sun (1889) by
Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) [Minneapolis Museum of Art]. Morris is working in
a modernist tradition that harks back to the Post-Impressionist tendencies that
were beginning to be explored by European painters towards the end of the
nineteenth century. The resultant
work is one that is full of character and a highly individualised sense of
pattern, established by the organic forms to which he was so persistently
drawn.