One example of his appreciation of flowers as art and symbolism is shown in his correspondence to the Pre-Raphaelite painter, Rossetti and his painting “Dante”. “Paradise pecking roses, and nestling, and singing birds lustily.  There is a floor of tall buttercups and hyacynths, and lilies, among which the five figures are treading ankle deep.  Coloured calm, above all pain, all passion, and all pride, reigns the atmosphere.  There they walk in knowledge, love, and beauty evermore.” Excerpt from “An Anthology of Writings : Some Principles of Decorating – Interior Design and His Contemporaries with Information about His Early Years of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England.

The Morris Society notes the following:

5 March–5 June – Facing the Late Victorians: Portraits of Writers and Artists from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, exhibition at the Henry B. Plant Museum, Tampa, FL. Occassioned by the Nineteenth Century Association’s annual conference, “Theatricality and the Performative in the Long Nineteenth Century.

CALL FOR PAPERS
Useful & Beautiful: The Transatlantic Arts
of William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites
Conference at the Univesity of Delaware, Winterthur Museum and Delaware Art Museum, 7–9 October 2010
Proposals due 15 March 2010

http://www.morrissociety.org