Harry Morley ARA (5 April 1881 – 18 September 1943) was a British painter, etcher and engraver known for his classical and mythological compositions.
The bird's-eye maps of Italian cities that appear on the end papers of all three books for Lucas were drawn by Morley and feature his wife's calligraphy.
[citation needed] His watercolours, which looked back to the English landscape tradition with a 'strong sense of place, technical assurance and characteristic integrity' were noted for their 'freedom and spontaneity'.
John D. Batten, the painter-activist Mary Sargant Florence, Francis Ernest Jackson, Maxwell Armfield and Joseph Southall were among the many that attended.
Morley's principal concern was the mythological and biblical figure paintings in oil and tempera that he exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts from 1912.
In 1924 his tempera painting, Apollo and Marsyas was purchased for the Tate under the terms of the Chantrey Bequest.In 1925, commissions to illustrate E. V. Lucas' A Wanderer in Rome (1926) and Edward Hutton's Cities of Sicily (1926) allowed Morley and his wife to return to Italy.
In search of interesting subjects the two men accompanied villagers of Ancticoli Corrado on an annual pilgrimage to the Sanctuary of the Madonna della Figura, Sora in the Lazio hills.
[2] Despite the collapse of the art market during the economic depression that followed the 1929 Wall Street Crash, Morley continued to paint, engrave, and exhibit.
In 1932, he reluctantly accepted a post at St. Martin's School of Art where for eight years he taught painting and life drawing two days a week.
[12] A series of six articles by Morley on the 'Theory and Practice of Figure Painting in Oils' appeared in The Artist magazine between September 1936 to February 1937.
[citation needed] Morley's mythological and classical figure compositions helped establish his reputation and attract critical approval.
By the mid-1930s, however, he had begun to experiment with a new approach to landscape painting, influenced in part by his longstanding admiration for the work of Paul Cézanne.
Were it not for the disruption caused by World War II, his relocation out of London, his ill-health and early death, it is impossible to tell where this new direction might have led.
[citation needed] Though Lilias and Julia Morley were unharmed, pieces of the bomb were found in the back garden and the house and studio were uninhabitable.
They shared a small cottage in Wool, Dorset near Bovington Camp where Castle trained soldiers to drive tanks.
Weakened by a series of heart attacks and recurring bouts of asthma, Morley died at his London home on 18 September 1943.