Portrait of William Morris, by Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919). Oil on canvas. 24 3/4 x 17 3/4 inches (63 x 45 cm). Collection of the William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow, London, catalogue no. 0127. Image courtesy of the William Morris Gallery, reproduced via Art UK for purposes of non-commercial academic research.
Murray first met William Morris as a seventeen-year-old in 1866 through Edward Burne-Jones and the two quickly became firm friends, a friendship that would last a lifetime. Murray was employed by the firm Morris, Marshall, Falkner & Co. on various projects. For example, when Morris rejected the twelve zodiac panels painted by the firm's assistants based on Burne-Jones's preliminary pencil drawings for Philip Webb's The Green Drawing Room at the South Kensington Museum [V&A], Murray was employed to repaint them. Even after Murray left Burne-Jones's studio in 1869, he continued to do work for M. M. F. & Co. as well as for Morris personally. For a time Murray became the principal stained-glass painter for the firm. He also collaborated directly with Morris himself. For instance, in 1870 Murray painted miniature illustrations for Morris's Book of Verse, which Morris presented to Georgiana Burne-Jones on her thirtieth birthday.
It was about this same time that Murray painted this excellent likeness of Morris when he was about age thirty-six. The portrait originally belonged to Morris's mother, Emma. It is a three-quarter profile view showing Morris as a well-dressed middle-class gentleman. Murray's portrait dates from the same time as G.F. Watts's famous portrait of Morris from 1870, that is now in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery. Murray later made another oil portrait of Morris, based on a photograph taken in 1880, showing Morris at age forty-six (Tucker 178). This portrait is in a private collection.
There is no greater indication of the life-long friendship and mutual regard between Murray and Morris than the fact that Murray was asked on 3 October 1896 to make three pencil drawings of Morris in death, lying in bed in the garden room at Kelmscott House.
Bibliography
Morris, William. A Book of Verse. A facsimile of the manuscript written in 1870 by William Morris. London: Scolar Press, 1981, frontispiece.
Tucker, Paul. I Giardini delle Regine: Of Queen's Gardens: The Myth of Florence in the Pre-Raphaelite Milieu and in American Culture (19th-20th centuries). Margherita Ciacci and Grazia Gobbi Sica Eds. Livorno, Italy: Sillabe, 2004, cat. 19, 178.
William Morris. Art UK. Web. 26 February 2026.
Created 23 February 2026