John Henry Dearle (1859-1932) FOR MORRIS & CO., AN ARRAS TAPESTRY 'THE BROOK'

Lot description

JOHN HENRY DEARLE (1859-1932) FOR MORRIS & CO., AN ARRAS TAPESTRY 'THE BROOK' WOVEN BY JOHN MARTIN AT THE MERTON ABBEY TAPESTRY WORKS 1916 Wool and silks, lined with blue cotton, depicting deer by river in landscape setting, banner above with text from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem 'The Brook': I chatter, chatter, as I flow To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on forever.Signed to lower guard, right edge: MERTON ABBEY 1916 231.5cm high, 256cm wide Provenance:Probably purchased by Sir Ernest Salter Wills for the Drawing Room at Littlecote House and thence by descent. Exhibited: Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society: Eleventh exhibition, Royal Academy 1916, No.32, £268. John Henry Dearle (1859 -1932) was a British textile and stained glass designer who started work as a shop assistant in his late teenage years at Morris & Co. Under William Morris personal tutelage he went on to work in the stained-glass studio in Queen Square and then as his tapestry assistant. Dearle designed many of the later wallpapers and textiles released by Morris & Co and contributed background and foliage patterns to tapestry designs featuring figures by Edward Burne-Jones and others. Following Morris's death in 1896, Dearle was appointed Art Director of the firm, and became its principal stained glass designer on the death of Burne-Jones in 1898. He managed the company's textile works at Merton Abbey until his death in 1932 and designed over 30 patterns for wallpaper and 40 for textiles as well as carpets and stained glass. His most famous designs include Golden Lily, Seaweed, Compton, Sweet Briar, Anemone, Artichoke, Daffodil and Iris. This design would seem to be a natural extension to his earlier design from 1892 Greenery- a larger triple length tapestry with the same Verdure design incorporating deer. The riddles of the earlier design (composed by William Morris) have been replaced in this instance with a quotation from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem 'The Brook'. The Met Collection holds an example of Greenery which, as with this example, was woven by John Martin but completed a year earlier in 1915 (Purchase, Edward C. Moore Jr. Gift, 1923, Object Number: 23.200a-n).