Showing posts with label John Quinn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Quinn. Show all posts

Thursday, August 23, 2012

May Morris and John Quinn's visit to the Tate

"Took the big rouring car at 2 o'c{lock] and drove to the Tate Gallery - a modern
building but looks 200 years old....

The pictures by Millais were very bad - candy face, cheap confectionary,sentimental
to the last degree. Watts grandiose but not satisfying technically except in his portraits - which were very fine. MM. pointed out quietly the portrait of her mother by D.G.R. - a magnificent thing. The hands are especially fine. The face I thought a little too pretty but the colour was splendid, and the whole picture a splendidly rich picture of a beautiful woman. MM. now has the bracelet that Mrs. M. wore when she posed
for the picture. It is dated 1868 but MM. said they got it in 1871."

Sunday 3 September 1911

Not sure what portrait of Jane this is?
I thought at first this was Prosperine but no bracelet and it wasn't given to the Tate till 1940.

May Morris and John Quinn



Wikipedia oddly doesn't mention May:

John Quinn met May Morris in 1909, and a romantic relationship between them
began almost immediately. However, by ·1911 - when Quinn took a long trip to
Europe with Augustus John to visit friends, attend to some legal business, and buy
art- the romance had lost its lustre for him. May remained very much in love though,
and tried to continue the affair, not completely giving up on Quinn until 1917.

http://www.morrissociety.org/publications/JWMS/AU96.12.1.Londraville.pdf

and there is a book of correspondence

On Poetry, Painting, and Politics: The Letters of May Morris and John Quinn, ed.
Janis Londraville

John Quinn (1870–1924) was a second generation Irish-American corporate lawyer in New York, who for a time was an important patron of major figures of post-impressionism and literary modernism, and collector in particular of original manuscripts.

He was a supporter of the Irish nationalist cause and associated with figures such as John Devoy and Roger Casement, though he worked for British Intelligence services before, during and after World War I. In this role he acted as case officer for, among others, Aleister Crowley who was an agent provocateur posing as an Irish nationalist in order to infiltrate anti-British groups of Irish and Germans in the United States.

He was good friends with Maud Gonne, the muse of W B Yeats and a fascinating woman.