자료: Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Morris
| William Morris | |
 William Morris by George Frederic Watts, 1870 | |
| Born | 24 March 1834 |
|---|---|
| Died | 3 October 1896 (aged 62) |
| Nationality | English |
| Occupation | Artist Writer |
| Known for | Arts and Crafts movement British Socialism |
William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was an English architect, furniture and textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement.
Born in Walthamstow in east London, Morris was educated at Marlborough and Oxford. In 1856, he became an apprentice to Gothic revival architect G. E. Street. That same year he founded the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, an outlet for his poetry and a forum for development of his theories of hand-craftsmanship in the decorative arts. In 1861, Morris founded a design firm in partnership with the artist Edward Burne-Jones, and the poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti which had a profound impact on the decoration of churches and houses into the early 20th century. Morris's chief contribution was as a designer of repeating patterns for wallpapers and textiles, many based on a close observation of nature. He was also a major contributor to the resurgence of traditional textile arts and methods of production.
Morris wrote and published poetry, fiction, and translations of ancient and medieval texts throughout his life. His best-known works include The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858), The Earthly Paradise (1868–1870), A Dream of John Ball and theutopian News from Nowhere.
Morris was an important figure in the emergence of socialism in Great Britain, founding the Socialist League in 1884, but breaking with the movement over goals and methods by the end of that decade. He devoted much of the rest of his life to the Kelmscott Press, which he founded in 1891. The 1896 Kelmscott edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer is considered a masterpiece of book design.
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[edit]Biography
[edit]Early life and education
Morris was born at Elm Houses, Walthamstow, on 24 March 1834, the third child and the eldest son of William Morris, a partner in the firm of Sanderson & Co., bill brokers in the City of London. His mother was Emma Morris née Shelton, daughter of Joseph Shelton, a teacher of music in Worcester.[1] As a child Morris was delicate but studious. He learned to read very early, and by the time he was four years old he was familiar with most of the Waverley novels. When he was six the family moved to Woodford Hall, where new opportunities for an out-of-door life brought the boy health and vigour. He rode about Epping Forest, sometimes in a toy suit ofarmour, where he became a close observer of animal nature and was able to recognize any bird upon the wing.[2][3]
At the same time he continued to read whatever came in his way and was particularly attracted by the stories in the Arabian Nightsand by the designs in Gerard's Herbal. He studied with his sisters' governess until he was nine, when he was sent to a school at Walthamstow. In 1842, his sister Isabella was born. She would grow up to be the churchwoman who oversaw the revival of theDeaconess Order in the Anglican Communion.[4] In his thirteenth year their father died, leaving the family well-to-do. The home at Woodford was broken up, as being unnecessarily large, and in 1848 the family relocated to Water House and William Morris entered Marlborough School, where his father had bought him a nomination. Morris was at the school for three years, but gained little from attending it beyond a taste for architecture, fostered by the school library, and an attraction towards the Anglo-Catholic movement.[5]He made but slow progress in school work and at Christmas 1851 was removed and sent to a private tutor, the Rev. F. B. Guy, later Canon of St. Alban's, for a year to prepare him for University.[2][6]
[edit]Oxford, apprenticeship, and artistic influences
In June 1852 Morris entered Exeter College, Oxford, though since the college was full, he was unable to go into residence until January 1853. At Exeter, Morris met Edward Burne-Jones, also a first year undergraduate, who would become his life-long friend and collaborator. Morris also joined a Birmingham group at Pembroke College, known among themselves as the "Brotherhood" and to historians as the "Pembroke set".[2][7] Together, they read theology, ecclesiastical history, and medieval poetry; studied art, and fostered their study in the long vacations by visiting English churches and the Continental cathedrals. They became strongly influenced by the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites, John Ruskin's essay "The Nature of Gothic" from the second volume of The Stones of Venice, Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur and the poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Morris began to develop his philosophy of rejecting the tawdry industrial manufacture of decorative arts and architecture in favour of a return to hand-craftsmanship, raisingartisans to the status of artists, creating art that should be affordable and hand-made, with no hierarchy of artistic mediums.[2]
Moreover, Morris began at this time to write poetry and many of his first pieces, afterwards destroyed, were held by sound judges to be equal to anything else he ever worked on. Both Morris and Burne-Jones had come to Oxford with the intention of taking holy orders, but as they felt their way, they both came to the conclusion that there was more to be done in the direction of social reform than of ecclesiastical work and that their energies would be best employed outside the priesthood. Morris decided to become an architect and for the better propagation of the views of the new brotherhood a magazine was at the same time projected, which was to make a specialty of social articles, besides poems and short stories. At the beginning of 1856 the two schemes came to a head together. Morris, having passed his finals in the previous term, was entered as a pupil at the office of George Edmund Street, one of the leading English Gothic revival architects who had his headquarters in Oxford as architect to the diocese;[1] and on New Year's Day the first issue of theOxford and Cambridge Magazine appeared. The expenses of publishing were borne entirely by Morris, but he resigned the formal editorship after the first issue. Many distinguished compositions appeared in its pages, but it gradually languished and was given up after a year's experiment. The chief immediate result was the friendship between Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, which sprang up from a successful attempt to secure Rossetti as a contributor.[2]
In Street’s office Morris formed an intimate and lifelong friendship with the senior clerk, Philip Webb, which had an important influence over the development taken by English domestic architecture during the next generation. He worked in Street’s office for the rest of that year, first at Oxford and afterwards in London when Street removed there in the autumn.[1] Morris worked very hard both in and out of office hours at architecture and painting, and he studied architectural drawing under Webb.[8] Rossetti, however, persuaded him that he was better suited for a painter, and after a while he devoted himself exclusively to that branch of art. That summer the two friends visited Oxford and finding the new Oxford Union debating-hall under construction, pursued a commission to paint the upper walls with scenes from Le Morte d'Arthur and to decorate the roof between the open timbers. Seven artists were recruited, among them Valentine Prinsep and Arthur Hughes,[9] and the work was hastily begun. Morris worked with feverish energy and on finishing the portion assigned to him, proceeded to decorate the roof. The frescoes, done too soon and too fast, began to fade at once and are now barely decipherable; but the broken designs, so long as any vestige remains, will always be interesting as a relic of an important aesthetic movement and as the first attempt on Morris's part towards the decorative arts.
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Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
In 1867, Morris founded the decorative arts firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. with Rossetti, Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brownand Philip Webb as partners, together with Charles Faulkner and P. P. Marshall, the former of whom was a member of the Oxford Brotherhood, and the latter a friend of Brown and Rossetti.[1] The prospectus set forth that the firm would undertake carving, stained glass, metal-work, paper-hangings, chintzes (printed fabrics), and carpets.[2] The decoration of churches was from the first an important part of the business. On its non-ecclesiastical side it gradually was extended to include, besides painted windows and mural decoration, furniture, metal and glass wares, cloth and paper wall-hangings, embroideries, jewelery, woven and knotted carpets, silk damasks, and tapestries. The first headquarters of the firm were at 8 Red Lion Square.
The work shown by the firm at the 1862 International Exhibition attracted much notice, and within a few years it was flourishing. In the autumn of 1864, a severe illness obliged Morris to choose between giving up his home at Red House in Kent and giving up his work in London. With great reluctance he gave up Red House, and in 1865 established himself under the same roof with his workshops, now relocated to Queen Square, Bloomsbury.[1]
An important commission of 1867[13] was the "green dining room" at the South Kensington Museum (now the Morris Room of theVictoria and Albert), featuring stained glass windows and panel figures by Burne-Jones, panels with branches of fruit or flowers by Morris, and olive branches and a frieze by Philip Webb.
In 1874 Morris proposed a reorganization, and Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown decided to leave the firm, requiring a return on their shares which proved to be a costly business. Throughout his life, Morris continued as principal owner and design director, although the company changed names. Its most famous incarnation was as Morris & Co. The firm's designs are still sold today under licenses given to Sanderson and Sons (which markets the "Morris & Co." brand) and Liberty of London.
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Socialism
Morris and his daughter May were amongst Britain's first socialists, working directly with Eleanor Marx and Engels to begin the socialist movement.
In the 1870s, Morris had begun to take an active interest in politics. He became treasurer of the National Liberal League in 1879, but after the Irish coercive measures of 1881 he finally abandoned the Liberal party and drifted further into socialism. For ten or twelve years this movement had been gaining ground in England, and the Social Democratic Federation was formed in 1881. In January 1883, within a week of his election to an honorary fellowship at his old Oxford college, Exeter, Morris was enrolled among the SDF's members. Thenceforward for two years his advocacy of the cause of socialism absorbed not only his spare time, but the thought and energy of all his working hours. For it he even neglected literature and art. In March 1883 he gave an address at Manchester on "Art, Wealth and Riches"; in May he was elected upon the executive of the federation. In September he wrote the first of his Chants for Socialists. About the same time he shocked the authorities by pleading in University Hall for the wholesale support of socialism among the undergraduates at Oxford. Nevertheless, the federation began to weaken. At the franchise meeting in Hyde Park in 1884 it was unable to get a hearing. Morris, however, had not yet lost heart. Internal dissensions in 1884 led to the Morris's foundation of the breakaway Socialist League, and in February 1885 a new organ, Commonweal, began to print Morris's rallying-songs. Still, differences of opinion and degree prevented concerted action. After the Trafalgar Square riots in February 1886, the League became caught up in a debate between those who believed in working through Parliament and with the existing union movement (alongside preparing and propagandising for revolutionary transformation) and an anarchist-influenced section who did not, a debate that distanced it from the growing working-class Labour movement of the decade. Morris played peacemaker but sided with the anti-Parliamentarians, who won control of the League at the expense of the departure of the 'orthodox' Marxist group. In 1889, in a Socialist League now dominated by Anarchists, Morris was deposed from the management of Commonweal. The following years have been described as a time of disillusionment for Morris, but he continued to write articles and give public lectures in active support of the Socialist cause, Morris himself being perhaps the greatest British representative of what has come to be calledlibertarian socialism. Liberated from internal factional struggles, he retracted his anti-Parliamentary position and worked for Socialist unity, giving his last public lecture in January 1896 on the subject of 'One Socialist Party'.[2]
This side of Morris's work is well-discussed in the biography by E. P. Thompson (subtitled Romantic to Revolutionary). It was during this period that Morris wrote his best-known prose works, A Dream of John Ball and the utopian News from Nowhere.
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