Double-side Cedric Morris painting auctioned for £162,500

A two-sided painting by a renowned East Anglian artist has sold at auction for more than double its estimated value.

Cambridge-based auctioneers Cheffins said the Cedric Morris artwork, which had never been sold on the open market before, fetched £162,500 and showed the artist’s “continued popularity”.

Morris (1889-1982), who founded the East Anglian School of Painting & Drawing in Essex before moving it to Suffolk, was believed to have finished the artwork in the 1930s before gifting it to his student, Bettina Shaw-Lawrence.

The oil on canvas, which featured a floral landscape on one side and rural building on the reverse, was sold to a London-based bidder on Thursday.

The auction was the first time the painting had been available on the open market.

It followed Cheffins’ previous auction of another Morris which had been gifted to fellow artist Lucy Harwoodwork.

The other side depicted outbuildings at the art school at Benton End, near Hadleigh in Suffolk, which had relocated from Dedham in Essex after a fire.

Morris ran the private art school with fellow painter Arthur Lett-Haines. Aldeburgh Scallop sculptor Maggi Hambling was one of their pupils.

Brett Tryner, a director at Cheffins said: “This is an excellent result and demonstrates Morris’s continued popularity as one of the most sought-after artists in the post-modern era.

“The paintings enviable provenance, having been gifted directly by Morris to Bettina Shaw-Lawrence, helped to ensure this painting had some serious pre-sale interest, with inquiries from both private buyers and institutions the world over.

“Perfectly demonstrating the period in Morris’s career when he produced some of his most wonderful still-life pictures, this painting was unusual to have firstly been fresh-to-market, but also to have another view painted on the reverse.”

The landscape paintings were given to Cheffins to auction by the Shaw-Lawrence family.

Mr Tryner said Bettina Shaw-Lawrence had been a well-regarded artist herself and initially attended art classes by the painter Fernand Léger in 1938.