Cheffins have announced the news that an unseen painting by Cedric Morris will be on sale at auction on the 23rd February 2023 with an estimated sale price of £10,000 to £15,000.
The painting was gifted to Lucy Harwood during her time at Benton End, and is now being sold by her estate. The work, which is painted on both sides, depicts the farm buildings at Benton End, which no longer exist, as well as other floral still life.
While Cedric Morris’s work fell out of favour following his death in 1982, Cheffins Auctioneers are reporting that his works have surged in price in recent years, pulling up values for other members of the Benton End Group at the same time.
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With values a few years ago standing in the low thousands, there has since been a series of events which have led to him becoming one of the most sought after Modern British artists at auction. Sotheby’s sold a painting by Morris for £226,800 in 2022, over 10 times its estimate.
'Cedric Morris, artist and plantsman, and one half of the couple who founded The East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Benton End, Suffolk, is having a resurgence. Prices for his works have skyrocketed in the past decade, and in the early 2000s, his works would only sell for the low to mid thousands, however now, for most, he is in the realm of the unaffordable' says Brett Tryner, Director at Cheffins.
'Arguably, the tide began to turn in around 2016, when three of his paintings were sold as part of David Bowie’s estate. This helped to bring Morris back into the public eye, and this was backed up by exhibitions at Gainsborough’s House, the Garden Museum hosting an exhibition of his work in 2018, the first in over thirty years, and another exhibition hosted by dealer Philip Mould, Beyond the Garden Wall, who has long been a Morris fan, and promoted his love of his work during his Art in Isolation series during lockdown.'
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The new found interest in Cedric Morris was helped by the First Site Gallery’s highly acclaimed Life With Art exhibition last year, which commemorated works by the Benton End Group. This has also helped to increase interest around Benton End itself, which is set to be reopened to the public and is currently being restored as a subsidiary to The Garden Museum.
And this new found interest in the Benton End Group, coupled with Morris’s popularity has led to rising prices for the likes of other members of the Benton End Group, such as Lucy Harwood and Allan Walton.
