by A. S. Byatt
Stephen Coote, in his book William Morris: His Life and Work, juxtaposes Morris’s wonderful Peacock and Dragon (1878) with a fourteenth-century Sicilian textile in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Peacock and Dragon is one of Morris’s best-loved and most complex textiles. The Sicilian textile has a repeated image of a pair of birds back-to-back and turning their heads – with hawk or eagle beaks – to glare balefully at each other. The juxtaposition makes it evident just how much Morris had learned from his studies in the V&A. But Peacock and Dragon is very different from most of Morris’s woven or painted birds. I am very attached to his first attempt to depict birds, which he did on his first known embroidery in 1857. This is a woollen hanging, If I Can (Morris’s personal motto), which has a simple pattern of alternating trees bearing red and yellow fruits, and some hunched creatures which I think of as the Flat Bird. The art historian Linda Parry refers to this creature as ‘over-stylised’, but I would call it uncouth. It has two flattish slabs, tapering towards the left end, on top of each other, with a beak shape at the top right. I am not sure, looking at it in reproduction, whether it has an eye – there is no attempt at feet. Apparently it was once brightly coloured in aniline dyed crewel wools, which have now faded to ghostly browns. After this, the birds on Morris’s tapestries and other images were worked by others, including Philip Webb and May Morris who was very skilled with birds. Birds in Morris’s earlier works seem to sit or stand upon the foliage, having been added later. But already in 1877 Morris was writing to Thomas Wardle, saying he was studying birds in order to put them into his next design. Linda Parry reproduces the original watercolour design for Rose, a printed textile on which small, vaguely thrush-like birds are placed among the rose branches, two clinging to them, another two pairs standing on the ground between the leaves. These birds, like many of Morris’s birds, are peaceable and plump, a kind of generic garden bird. After staring at many birds in many books, I have come to the tentative conclusion that they look like living creatures if they have a pupil in their eye, and like part of the overall design if they do not. They are amiable, static birds.
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One of Morris’s most-loved designs is Bird, a woollen double cloth which he made for his own drawing room at Kelmscott House in Hammersmith. There are alternating horizontal rows of pairs of birds. There are mild, alert pairs of standing birds, looking over their shoulders towards each other, above pairs of open-winged birds hovering and surveying the pomegranate in the leafy design that contains them. Their precisely observed twiggy legs and clawed feet, their precisely observed tail feathers and wing feathers are pleasing in their generic reminiscence of birds in general. They are designs as Morris wrote of designs – generalisations that also show something of the particular presence of the birds. The background – a bluish green on indigo, thick with leaves and flowers touched in red and gold – is full of arrested life. There are tulips and roses, daisies and something resembling a daffodil, sunflowers and curling tendrils, all in the same three colours, which make the red head, legs and tail of the standing bird stand out, rhythmically. Linda Parry also shows a photograph of this hanging in place in the drawing room at Kelmscott House. It is both peaceful and interesting. Parry quotes a visitor on
…a most harmonious and peaceful house…most exquisitely kept. In dirty Hammersmith, it was as clean as the cleanest country house and the beautiful blue tapestry hanging all round the big living room, with its four windows on the river, looked as if they had just been hung up…the atmosphere was deliciously homely.
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Strawberry Thief, a printed cotton design, was made much later, in 1883, when Morris had moved to Merton Abbey and, after much effort and many problems, had mastered the difficult technique of indigo discharge. Strawberry Thief was the first indigo-discharge textile to include yellow and red on the lovely blue ground. It has a repeat of four birds, two perched on stylised green fronds, clearly singing lustily, and two beneath them or above them, amongst luscious strawberry plants with clear red berries, each bird carrying away a fruit held by the stalk. Morris said he had observed the birds in his own garden, making their way in under the protective netting and stealing the strawberries. He gave strict instructions that the birds were not to be chased away or disturbed. These birds have delicious sharp claws, strong beaks and lively eyes. They are the same colours – freckled breasts, grey or brown wings and tails – as the earlier ones. They are not thrushes, though they remind us of them. The colours of the textile are clear, strong, unexpected and splendid. There is a wonderful clear pale blue on the dark blue, mixed into an olivey leaf green, and there are patterns, both intricate and clear, of flowers, and flower buds, leaves and curling tendrils. Everything is balanced and orderly; everything is running riot; everything is an English garden.
CODA
This writing began, as I said, with an involuntary visual experience – Kelmscott behind closed eyes, with the meandering Thames and grass fields, when I was in the dark mysterious space of the Palazzo Fortuny. Later, I closed my eyes in Walthamstow, in the William Morris Gallery, and saw the stones and canals of Venice. I wanted to write about Fortuny, whose work I didn’t then know at all, but Morris wouldn’t go away. So I embarked on an essay without knowing what I should find.
Morris, as I said, I knew. I have studied his writing, and looked at his fabrics and wallpapers. We have Morris in our house. I eat my breakfast sitting on a faded Morris cushion with woodpecker and apple branches. We have a window with heavy Morris curtains…Our living room is papered with Willow Boughs and our tea towels have Morris flowers in rose and green complications. I eat my lunch from a teatray also covered in Willow Boughs. Our kitchen is tiled with Seaweed, which turned out in fact to be designed by John Henry Dearle, and has something which always excites me in Morris designs – a deeper allover background under the pale blue flowers and coiling seaweed leaves in different greens. I am drawn to Morris patterns which have an under-pattern of tiny dark leaves of evergreens. I don’t think we chose these designs out of a particular devotion to Morris – they were just the most exciting things we found. Both the colours and the geometry and, as Morris hoped, the reality of real flowers and leaves.
Fortuny was a whole new visual world to learn – fabrics and colours designed for the human body, as well as for elegant spaces. Silks and velvets never the same colour twice – the exhibition I saw in New York had a group of elegant dresses on stands, the subtle dyes always different, enhancing each other. Panache, grace, startling, calm. Someone in whose gallery I went to see Fortuny’s fabrics in London gave me a strip of dyed cloth, with a border of the same cloth in a different design. It sits on my desk. It is patterned in a rusty red-brown on two different dusty greens, the fabric, patterned with flowers, just darker and bluer than the border. Through the day, through changes of weather, the colours change, bluer, greener, the brown sandier, more russet at different times. I like looking at colours, just for the sake of looking at colours. It is always surprising how people don’t really look at things. I was once in a gallery where there was an exhibition of Monet’s paintings of Rouen Cathedral. I sat on a bench to look at them, in bright painted sunlight, in shadow, in simple daylight. A steady stream of people walked, without stopping, between me and the paintings, turning their heads briefly to note each one. What did they see, what did they remember? I, on the other hand, tried to make my brain record tiny juxtapositions of greys and browns, notations of shade and brightness. It is not possible to remember whole cathedrals, only impressions. But it is exciting to try.
I have taken so much sensual pleasure in this Fortuny–Morris project. I can’t hear music, really, and I think I give colours all the attention I have spare from not listening to sounds. I collected an unmanageable heap of large books on Fortuny and Morris, and had the same light-shadow experience. When I was looking at sleek Fortuny I couldn’t imagine the briefly fading and occluded Morris. When I turn
ed to Morris, there was all the life of the vegetable world, the colours of growing things, the geometry of branches and petals and fruits. And Fortuny faded temporarily to a transparent shadow.
When I began this essay I didn’t know how much it was going to be about another thing that obsesses me as a reader and a writer. Work. E.M. Forster once remarked sagaciously that novelists do not give work the importance it has in real life, not as much as love and death. And here I had not one but two obsessive workers, endlessly inventive, endlessly rigorous, endlessly beautiful. They both made the place where they lived identical with the place where they worked. They were both hands-on, with the dyeing and pleating, with the block-printing, with research about how to do things differently or better. They both invented new colours and resurrected old and discarded ones, using vegetable dyes not aniline ones (on the whole). They researched their subject with passion, and had large libraries, specialist and general. I was pleased to note that the first book about dyes that Morris bought was the first book written specifically on the art of dyeing, and was a Venetian book written in 1540. It was by Giovanni Ventura Roseto, Plictho de l’arte de tentori, which Morris said was hard to translate, which means he did translate it.
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Finally, two works of art, one by each artist. First Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, a dress from the Museo del Traje, Madrid. It is called Eleonora (1920–30), and is made of silk velvet, silk satin, silk cording and glass beads. It is black, long-sleeved, with an inserted group of pleats in a mixture of brownish gold and fading grey in the side, fastened with russet cord, and the lovely Venetian Murano beads which Fortuny chose himself from the glass-blowers. These are black and white and oval. There are beads also along the underside of the long sleeves. I don’t know if it was made for Eleonora Duse – there seem to be many dresses with her name in essays about Fortuny’s work. From a distance it rises from hem to neck, gleaming with regular silver curves of mounting fruits and stems. Only when you look more closely can you see the other ingredients of the pattern, which is dense and complex though it looks so orderly. Then you see that there is a mounting pattern of starbursts crowned with what appear to be fronds, within the curves of the fruit branches. Then you notice the tiny living creatures – a heraldic lion prancing, looking backwards and holding a screed which coils into the rays of the sun. And tiny open-winged birds, lively and also prancing, and also looking backwards in front of the curving fruit-branches. What I love about this design is the combination of the overall order of the repeating curves, moving up the body, and the detail at close quarters. I imagine that most people, seeing a woman in this subtle dress, would not be close enough to read the detail at all. You would need to be standing quite intimately near her. I thought, as I thought more and more as I saw more of Fortuny, of how his fabrics are made to move and fold with a moving body, to reveal themselves in part, changing as they move. I go back to this dress often, and study it, as I also go back to my final image from William Morris, Peacock and Dragon.
There is a fourteenth-century Sicilian textile in the V&A which has the double birds, almost joined at the tails, turned away from each other and looking fiercely backwards. These alternate with horizontal rows of lively hunting dogs. Morris’s Peacock and Dragon is sumptuous in green and gold. Horizontal lines of golden dragons alternate with horizontal lines of more shadowy peacocks in a redder gold and a shadowy green. They have wonderful curved necks, echoing each other, mouths open to hiss or shoot flame, static and aggressive. The peacocks have proud feet and tails; the dragons curve downwards out of a formal flame. The green background is formal too, and full of green flowers and leaves that make one surface. These are designed to occupy a proud space – a large wall. The whole surface is splendidly integrated and full of interesting detail. Like the Fortuny dress, Peacock and Dragon is brilliant, complicated and simple. I look at them again and again.
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FURTHER READING
FORTUNY
FORTUNY E WAGNER, Paolo Bolpagni,
Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, 2012
WAGNER AND THE ART OF THE THEATRE, Patrick Carnegy,
Yale University Press, 2006
PROUST AND VENICE, Peter Collier,
Cambridge University Press, 1989
FORTUNY, Anne-Marie Deschodt and Doretta Davanzo Poli,
Harry N. Abrams Inc., 2001
FASHION MEMOIR: Fortuny, Delphine Desveaux,
Thames & Hudson, 1998
THE SECRETS OF THE GRAND CANAL, Alberto Toso Fei,
Studio LT2, 2010
MARIANO FORTUNY: La seta e il velluto, Jean-Pierre Gabriel,
Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, 2010
KNOSSOS AND THE PROPHETS OF MODERNISM, Cathy Gere,
University of Chicago Press, 2009
LE MANTEAU DE FORTUNY, Gérard Macé,
Gallimard, 1987
FORTUNY: The Life and Work of Mariano Fortuny, Guillermo de Osma,
Rizzoli, 1980
FORTUNY ET PROUST: Venise, les Ballets Russes, Guillermo de Osma,
L’Echoppe, 2014
THE FORTUNY MUSEUM IN PALAZZO PESARO DEGLI ORFEI, VENICE,
Skira Guides, 2008
FORTUNY Y MADRAZO: An Artistic Legacy, Molly Sorkin and Jennifer Park, eds. Queen Sofía Spanish Institute, 2012
MORRIS
JOHN RUSKIN, Arts Council Exhibition,
Arts Council of Great Britain, 1983
THE FLOWERS OF WILLIAM MORRIS, Derek Baker,
Barn Elms Publishing, 1996
WILLIAM MORRIS: His Life and Work, Stephen Coote,
Garamond, 1990
WILLIAM MORRIS’S KELMSCOTT: Landscape and History, A. Crossley,
T. Hassall and P. Salway, eds.,
Windgather Press, 2007
SELECTED POEMS OF WILLIAM MORRIS, Peter Faulkner, ed.,
Carcanet, 1992
QUESTIONS OF TRAVEL: William Morris in Iceland, Lavinia Greenlaw,
Notting Hill Editions, 2004
THE GARDENS OF WILLIAM MORRIS, Jill, Duchess of Hamilton, Penny Hart and John Simmons, Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 1998
WILLIAM MORRIS: A Life for Our Time, Fiona MacCarthy,
Faber & Faber, 1994
THE EARTHLY PARADISE, William Morris,
Longmans & Co., 1903
NEWS FROM NOWHERE AND OTHER WRITINGS, William Morris,
Penguin Classics, 1993
THE STORY OF SIGURD THE VOLSUNG AND THE FALL OF THE NIBLUNGS, William Morris,
Longmans & Co., 1904
THE WELL AT THE WORLD’S END, William Morris,
Longmans & Co., 1896
RED HOUSE, National Trust,
National Trust Enterprises Ltd., 2003
WILLIAM MORRIS: Artist, Craftsman, Pioneer, R. Ormiston and N. M. Wells,
Flame Tree Publishing, 2010
WILLIAM MORRIS AND THE ART OF EVERYDAY LIFE, Wendy Parkins, ed.,
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010
TEXTILES OF THE ARTS & CRAFTS MOVEMENT, Linda Parry,
Thames & Hudson, 1998
WILLIAM MORRIS: Art and Kelmscott, Linda Parry, ed.,
Boydell, 1996
WILLIAM MORRIS TEXTILES, Linda Parry,
V&A Publishing, 2013
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI, Ernest Radford,
George Newnes Ltd., 1905
THE NATURE OF GOTHIC, John Ruskin,
Euston Grove Press, 2008
THE NATURE OF GOTHIC, John Ruskin,
Kelmscott Press, 1892
WILLIAM MORRIS AND THE ARTS & CRAFTS HOME, Pamela Todd,
Thames & Hudson, 2005
V&A PATTERN: William Morris,
V&A Publishing, 2009
WILLIAM MORRIS AS DESIGNER, Ray Watkinson,
Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1967
ESSENTIAL WILLIAM MORRIS, Iain Zaczek,
Parragon, 2000
FORTUNY & MORRIS
THE STONES OF VENICE, John Ruskin,
Da Capo Press, 1960
LIST
OF ILLUSTRATIONS
fm.1 Palazzo Pesaro Orfei, Ferdinando Ongania Editore, c.1895
FORTUNY & MORRIS
1.1 William Morris, Frederick Hollyer, 1874
1.2 Mariano Fortuny, unknown, 1900
1.3 Jane Burden as La Belle Iseult, William Morris, 1858
1.4 Jane Morris as Proserpine, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1874
1.5 Jane Morris, John Robert Parsons, 1865
1.6 ‘William Morris in a bath-tub’, Edward Burne-Jones
1.7 Henriette Negrin, Mariano Fortuny, c.1900
1.8 Henriette at work in the Palazzo Pesaro Orfei, Mariano Fortuny, 1907
THE HOUSES
2.1 East front of Red House, Bexleyheath, London
2.2 Daisy hanging, William Morris, worked by Jane Morris and others, early 1860s
2.3 Design for Trellis wallpaper, William Morris with birds by Philip Webb, 1862
2.4 Trellis wallpaper, William Morris with birds by Philip Webb, 1864
2.5 Kelmscott Manor, as it appears in Charles M. Gere’s woodcut frontispiece of News from Nowhere by William Morris, Kelmscott Press, 1893
2.6 Honeysuckle wallpaper, William Morris or May Morris, 1883
2.7 William Morris’s bedroom at Kelmscott Manor
2.8 The salon at the Palazzo Pesaro Orfei, Mariano Fortuny, c.1940
2.9 Short velvet cape printed in silver and gold, Mariano Fortuny
2.10 Long velvet cape printed in gold, Mariano Fortuny
2.11 Ponte del Piovan, Venice, Mariano Fortuny, c.1905
2.12 Sketch for opera costume of Isolda, Mariano Fortuny, c.1900
2.13 Froissart’s Chronicles, William Morris, Kelmscott Press, 1897
NORTH & SOUTH
