Portrait of William Morris. c.1870. Brown watercolour wash. 5 5/8 x 5 1/4 inches (14.3 x 13.3 cm). Collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London, accession no. NPG 3652, given by Christopher Hughes in 1949. Image courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) Deed. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
According to Paul Tucker, Murray made nine portraits of Morris during the course of his career in various media, including the three pencil drawings of Morris on his deathbed in 1896 (178). One of Murray's first portraits was the miniature in watercolour on vellum that Murray made for the title-page of Morris's illuminated manuscript A Book of Verse that Morris began in February 1870. Murray's portrait drawing is connected with a photograph of Morris taken by John Robert Parsons on 14 June 1870 so it is likely that Murray's portrait drawing is based both on Parson's photograph and live sittings. Carol Blackett-Ord has pointed out that, although the miniature is fully coloured and facing to the left, it is otherwise very close to the profile in the brown wash drawing now in the National Portrait Gallery. This drawing of Morris at the NPG, however, bears an even closer resemblance to an earlier monochrome wash drawing by Murray showing a half-length portrait of a seated Morris that is now in the collection of the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester [accession no. D.1921.31]. This drawing is dated 1 January 1870 so it would appear to be the earliest of this group of Morris drawings.
The drawing of Morris at the NPG is discussed in detail on their website. It was discovered as an unattributed drawing in a bookshop by Christopher Hughes around 1935. Hughes then sent it to May Morris for her opinion. In a letter of 6 October 1935 she replied to Hughes: "I cannot absolutely pronounce upon this drawing, but feel very nearly certain that it is by Charles Fairfax Murray. It is like his execution, and the pose and whole look of the drawing resembles to my mind a profile done for one of the MSS that my Father painted for Mrs. Burne-Jones early in the seventies. The 'William Morris' at the bottom also looks to me like Murray's handwriting. I suppose there would be no clue in the provenance of the drawing?" (qtd. Blackett-Ord). May Morris subsequently used this image to represent William Morris in the first volume of her William Morris: Artist Writer Socialist published in 1936 with a photogravure frontispiece of the drawing by Emery Walker.
Bibliography
Blackett-Ord, Carol. Extended catalogue entry. William Morris. National Portrait Gallery. Web. 24 February 2026.
Morris, William. A Book of Verse. A facsimile of the manuscript written in 1870 by William Morris. London: Scolar Press, 1981, frontispiece.
Saywell, David and Jacob Simon. National Portrait Gallery. Complete Illustrated Catalogue. London: National Portrait Gallery. 2004. 443.
Tucker, Paul. I Giardini delle Regine: Of Queen's Gardens: The Myth of Florence in the Pre-Raphaelite Milieu and in American Culture (19th-20th centuries) . Margherita Ciacci and Grazia Gobbi Sica Eds. Livorno, Italy: Sillabe, 2004, cat. 19, 178.
William Morris. National Portrait Gallery. Web. 24 February 2026.
Created 4 February 2026