Haines and Morris
Sir: John McEwen's interesting account (20 February) of the two artists Ben Nicholson and Sir Cedric Morris necessarily left opt any mention of a third, namely the enor- mously important and long-lasting partner- ship between Cedric Morris and Lett Haines over a period of 60 years. Some regarded the one as the painter and the other as the teacher, but Cedric Morris was no mean teacher and Lett Haines was himself an artist of startling originality and ingenuity. Nobody who knew either man could speak for long about the one without mentioning the other.
Together they inspired whole generations of aspiring and established artists and art teachers, none of whom could come away from a short visit to their informal menage, first at Dedham and then at Benton End, Hadleigh, without the better being able to practise their art or ply their profession. Persons brought up within the accepted bounds of bourgeois behaviour, high, mid- dle or low, soon found the atmosphere, and the lusty quarrellings, stimulating and liberating.
It is a matter of pride that the last portrait painted by Cedric Morris is of me, that own it, and that it was commissioned by Lett Haines.
(Marquess of) Aberdeen Haughley Grange, Stowmarket, Suffolk
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