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Throughout his life, Cedric Morris travelled
extensively across Europe documenting the places he visited in the medium of
paint. It could be said that the two most influential forces behind Morris’
artistic output were plants and travel. The Iberian Peninsula, in particular,
had an enduring appeal for Morris due its tranquillity, light and display of
exotic species of flora and fauna. Throughout the 1950s he returned to Spain
and Portugal painting prolifically with each visit. The allure of plant
collecting throughout the region held a persistent attraction for Morris. His
garden of rare plants and propagated Irises at Benton End (Hadleigh, Suffolk)
was renowned among gardeners and artists alike as being among the finest
private collections of plants in the country. In this respect Morris was
relentless in his search for foreign species of plants and flowers from which
he could draw inspiration both as a painter and as a plantsman.

It was this insatiable commitment to the study
and depiction of plants that brought Morris back to the Canary Islands
throughout the late 1940s and 1950s. He was known to travel widely and numerous
occasions with his partner Arthur Lett-Haines (1894-1978) with whom he
established the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in 1937 in Dedham,
Essex. However, on many other occasions Morris travelled alone or with friends
in search of landscapes to paint and plants to collect and bring home to his
garden, his one true muse in life.

One such friend was the fellow plantsman Nigel Scott
(d. 1957) after whom Morris touchingly named his ‘Benton Nigel’ species of Iris
in 1956. Scott was an immensely influential figure in Morris’ life, if only for
a relatively short period (Scott was to contract a fatal fever while collecting
Plants with Morris in Madeira in January 1957). In Ronald Blythe’s (b. 1922)
recollection of Benton End he describes how Scott was almost as fine a gardener
as Morris and together they opened up the upper garden at Benton in the early
1950s. They would share many collecting holidays together throughout the
Canaries. Although not predominantly a collector of plants per se, Morris was
known to bring back a plethora of foreign seeds for his garden whenever he
travelled. Fellow gardener Beth Chatto (b. 1923) recalls how Morris grew
species of plants uncommon to English soil at the time. His excursions to the
Spanish archipelago were a source of great inspiration for his painting and his
planting. In addition, they were to affirm his companionship with Scott.

San
Marco, Tenerife was painted in 1955 on one of the numerous trips
Morris and Scott took to the Canary Islands in search of rare and intriguing
species of plants. Located on the Northern coast of Tenerife, the sheltered bay
of Playa de San Marcos became a popular tourist destination during the 1950s
and remains so to this day. Named in honour of Saint Mark the Evangelist, the
cove is

home to a cave known to locals as the site in
which the image of San Marco appeared following the conquest of the Canary
Islands by the Crown of Castile in the early fifteenth century.

Forever
drawn to the coast, Morris painted A succession of views of Tenerife during
this time, one of which entitled simply, Tenerife
(1957) (The Minories Art Gallery, Colchester) calls to mind the simplified
views of harbour-side communities favoured during the early stages of his
career when painting in Newlyn and Brittany with fellow artist Christopher Wood
(1901-1930). In this work Morris is primarily concerned with the layering of
colour and texture to evoke the tranquillity and harmony within the scene. The
gentle lapping of the surf as it makes contact with the surrounding cliffs, the
light as it falls upon the stuccoed building in the right foreground or the
trail of the cove as it bends towards the North Atlantic Ocean. All of this is
captured by Morris in a moment of supreme painting investing the work with the
quality similar to the Impressionist method of painting en plein air. An outdoorsman by nature his painting of San Marco
perfectly synthesises his proficiency when painting landscapes.