Landscape of Shame (in Tate’s collection), painted by Morris in around 1960, depicts a seemingly endless expanse of a variety of bird species lying dead in an arid landscape. This was made by Morris as a protest against the use of certain crop-sprays and pesticides. The effects of these chemicals on birds were made apparent by the late 1950s, when large numbers of birds were found dead in fields, a dystopian and haunting image recreated by Morris to shock his viewers and bring to light a devastating reality of our destruction of nature.
This painting directly marks a contrast to an earlier work by Morris entitled Landscape of Birds (also held by Tate), which shows a biodiverse scene packed full of bird life and various plants. Morris included a wide range and variety of species in both of these pieces, reflecting the vast scale of harm that these pesticides (and more broadly speaking, industrialisation) have had on our bird population.
Throughout Cedric Morris’ many paintings of birds, there is a constant reminder of the threat that humankind has cast over these animals, with one particularly haunting depiction of this looming threat being an oil tanker on the horizon in Morris’ 1938 painting titled Shags which depicts three of these seabirds (part of the cormorant family) in the foreground of a coastal landscape. This painting was also a poignant political comment made by Morris surrounding coastal oil pollution, especially from large vessels on the sea.
In the same year that Shags was painted (1938), there were multiple parliamentary discussions being held around pollution, primarily revolving around severe oil pollution on the Gower Coast, which is located in South Wales. It was very close to here where Morris was born and spent the early years of his childhood- his connection to this particular environment and the political context now surrounding it makes this piece even more powerful and still very much relevant today.
