1947/4 Portrait of D.C.

1947/4 Portrait of D.C. depicts David Cox, a fellow soldier who served with Desmond Morris and whom the artist remembered for his unusually long neck. Painted in the barrack room while Morris was off duty, the work transforms an observed physical characteristic into an angular Surrealist construction that is both personal and boldly experimental.

Morris reduces the portrait to a few carefully balanced forms: a long central column, a circular eye and overlapping planes that open like folded wings around the head. Although the likeness is far from naturalistic, the exaggerated neck preserves a remembered feature of David Cox, showing how observation could be reshaped through humour, memory and Surrealist invention.

Pastel allowed Morris to combine soft transitions of blue, green, ochre and pink with the forceful dark contours that define the sitter’s elongated neck and sharply folded head. The pigment retains a velvety immediacy on the paper, while the contrast between blended colour and emphatic line makes the image feel simultaneously atmospheric and constructed.

Morris made the January 1947 portraits during his military service, working in the barrack room during periods when he was off duty. That setting gives the series an unusual intimacy: the sitters came from his immediate surroundings, but their familiar features became starting points for images that move beyond conventional military or social portraiture. The surviving heads from this period show Morris testing different ways of assembling the human figure from biomorphic segments, angular planes and strong linear rhythms. In Portrait of D.C., the greater emphasis on pointed shapes and vertical movement distinguishes the work from the rounded, cell-like structure of 1947/1 Portrait while confirming their shared experimental purpose.

Completed when Morris was eighteen, this portrait belongs to the small group of January 1947 pastels that preceded his first solo exhibition. Its named sitter, early date, inclusion in the Catalogue Resume on pages 94 to 95 and direct provenance from the artist through private collection and gallery give it a particularly tangible connection to the circumstances in which it was made. The work measures 38 × 28 cm (15 × 11 in) and is professionally framed.