Snowdrop specialist John Morley paints what he knows and loves: the plants from his garden, and the East Anglian landscape in which he has lived and worked for the past 30 years. His extraordinary garden contains over 300 varieties of snowdrops, as well as old daffodils, fritillaries and auriculas, and his knowledge of them is encyclopaedic.
A retrospective exhibition at the Garden Museum, running from the 19th of March – 20th of April 2025, offers a rare opportunity to see Morley’s paintings and pastels of flowers, fruits and garden plants – many of which have never been publicly displayed.
Like his friend the late Cedric Morris, Morley is part of the celebrated tradition of East Anglian painter and plantsman. His thorough plant-growing expertise combined with a mastery in conveying texture and the play of light on his subject, renders his paintings unforgettable.
“I have never thought of myself as an artist who gardens or as a gardener who paints – the two are just naturally interchangeable. The peace and harmony to be found in the garden is reflected in my paintings.” – John Morley
Born in Beckenham in 1942, Morley studied at Beckenham School of Art and Ravensbourne College of Art, before attending the Royal Academy Schools in 1963, where his teachers included Charles Mahoney, Edward Bawden, and Peter Greenham, the Keeper of the Schools.
Morley’s passion for rare and unusual snowdrops goes back to the early 1970s when he was teaching students at Epsom School of Art. In his class were three elderly women who were all keen gardeners, growing snowdrops originally bought in Woolworth’s in the 1940s. Later, Morley became friends with the artist and plantsman Cedric Morris who introduced him to the Suffolk plantswoman Jenny Robinson (who Morris appointed as his ‘plant executor’ in his will), and through her met Primrose Warburg, the doyenne of snowdrops in Oxford, remaining friends until her death in 1996.
Together with fellow galanthophile Richard Nutt, this generous circle of gardening friends would host snowdrop lunches, to which Morley was soon invited. It was a time when snowdrops were not particularly popular or fashionable, but Morley’s fascination grew along with his collection, boosted by gifts from his new friends. His list of rare snowdrops grew through the years as they interbred, and new forms appeared. The variations in leaf colour and form, from grey-blue to sharp green, and the extraordinary variety of markings of the inner and outer segments, including yellow and gold, have led to today’s widespread snowdrop obsession.
In 1984, Morley started selling his snowdrops, making a printed list of 20 items. Over the years, Morley’s snowdrops catalogues have become collectible items, illustrated with coloured photographs and featuring his own paintings for the covers. His final catalogue, after forty years, was published in 2024.
Initially supporting his family with art teaching at Epsom and Suffolk, and Westminster School, Morley has been an independent artist, having shown for 47 years at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, and with regular solo exhibitions at Godfrey Pilkington’s Piccadilly Gallery. In addition he held shows of his paintings at the Royal Academy in 1975, and at Kew in 1991. He was commissioned by the National Trust to paint landscapes at Stourhead and at Blickling in Norfolk.
The works in this exhibition will be available for purchase in aid of the Garden Museum’s learning and exhibition programmes.