Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2008 | Page 31

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CAVENDISH
MORTON A lifetime of art
By Roz Whistance

C

avendish Morton truly is
Renaissance Man. Well known
on the Island for his maritime
and landscape paintings, this artist
whose life has spanned almost a century
has worked as a boat builder, book
illustrator, teacher and designer of
sports cars. And his paintings reflect
a versatility which is rare today.
You are struck by how modern the
paintings seem. They are structural and
clean lined while a wealth of detail both
softens and adds to the information. His
boats are anatomically perfect, while the
water has a lovely translucence and the
weather drives down in angry slashes.
“I haven’t looked at this one for 60
years,” says Morton, closely examining
the curtain of sea behind the yacht. “I
thought I’d buggered it up with those
lines. But it actually shows the movement!”
A prolific artist, he has painted subjects
which are almost accidentally commercial:
accidental because the subjects which
appeal to him chime with today’s
photographic love of detail. His ability
to portray intricacy was no accident.
He and his twin brother Concord were
educated at home in Bembridge by his
father, a theatre portrait photographer,

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and his mother, a writer of popular novels
writing under the name of Concordia
Merrel. In 1926, at the age of 15, during
the summer of the General Strike,
Cavendish and Concord were sent off
to St Ives in Cornwall to learn to build
boats. “Our parents’ idea was that we saw
and felt the structure and it would help
with our painting or if we were doing
sculpture,” said Morton. “It wouldn’t
have been allowed today,” he smiles. “I
had no insurance or anything like that!”
They built a 41ft fishing boat. It
was, says Morton, “a marvellous
thing to do. We used our hands, there
were no power tools of course.”
Three years later, at 18, after a stint
painting at Nicholson’s boat yard in
Gosport, Morton had a painting exhibited
in the Royal Academy in 1930. “It was
the Shamrock V, a J class. A boat built
for Sir Thomas Lipton for Americas
Cup. I realise then how valuable it
had been for me to work on the actual
structure of a boat. Shamrock V was
on metal frames with wood planking.”
His art was fed by a growing passion
for sailing, and he escaped to Cowes
whenever he could. “I sailed in Velsheda,
a J class, among others. I was inspired by

the
wonderful
effects of rope and sail on the sea, and
by the various weather conditions – a
slight breeze with spinnakers blowing
out, to sailing in heavy weather. I was
dismasted in the North Sea. It’s always
interesting when the mast goes!”
But Morton was hardly a dilettante
artist. He became interested in aircraft,
and started working in advertising for
air manufacturers Saunders Roe in East
Cowes. He and his brother were finding
it hard going selling portraits, so “we
supplemented our ordinary paintings by
producing aircraft manuals and aircraft
advertising, flight covers and so on.”
He also found work in the steel
industry in Glasgow, producing nearly
20 drawings for Beardmore steel works,
and did similar work for shipbuilders
John Brown. “That sort of kept enough
income to live on,” recalls Morton.
Word of their skills got round,
particularly in the aircraft industry,
but just as work in freelance industrial
painting really started to take off the war
came. Morton was posted to Saunders

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