1947/4 PORTRAIT OF D.C.

Completed January 1947

Pastel on paper. 15 x 11 in., 38 x 28 cm.

This is a portrait of David Cox, a soldier serving with Morris. Morris recalls that Cox had a long neck. This and the other works of January 1947 were executed in the barrack room when Morris was off duty.

Publication: Catalogue Resume, p94/95

1947/4 Portrait of D.C. is one of four surviving works from Desmond Morris’s early 1947 pastel series depicting human heads as biomorphic constructions. Created while the artist was serving in the military, the work represents a portrait of David Cox, a fellow soldier, distinguished here by his elongated neck — a feature that Morris noted with wry observation.

Executed during off-duty hours in the barrack room, this pastel demonstrates Morris’s emerging surrealist sensibility and fascination with the structures of living form. The head and shoulders appear as interlocking organic shapes, blending anatomical suggestion with abstraction. The result is a composition that seems to oscillate between figuration and the biological — an early example of the artist’s unique “organic surrealism.”

The cool palette of blue, green, and ochre contrasts with warmer pink tones, achieving both harmony and psychological depth. It stands as an intimate record of Morris’s early style — executed before his later acclaim as a painter, zoologist, and author.

Desmond Morris (b. 1928, Wiltshire, England) is a distinguished British surrealist artist and zoologist. Trained in zoology at the University of Birmingham and the University of Oxford, where he completed a PhD in animal behaviour, Morris became internationally recognised for The Naked Ape (1967), his groundbreaking exploration of human evolution and behaviour.

Parallel to his scientific career, he pursued an equally prolific artistic path, exhibiting alongside figures such as Joan Miró and exploring biomorphic surrealism throughout his oeuvre. His paintings merge subconscious exploration with biological precision — a dialogue between nature and imagination.

Morris’s works are held in major private and public collections worldwide and have been exhibited in London, New York, Tokyo, and Zurich, affirming his rare position as both scientist and surrealist visionary.

1947/4 Portrait of D.C. holds exceptional historical and artistic importance within Desmond Morris’s oeuvre. Created during his military service, it captures the intersection of observation and imagination that would later define his entire career. Early works from 1947 rarely appear on the market, and their scarcity — combined with their clear link to Morris’s later surrealist development — makes them highly sought-after among collectors of British surrealism and post-war abstraction.

This pastel represents a pivotal moment: the young Morris, experimenting with form and psyche, already bridging the disciplines of art and science in a way that remains utterly unique in modern British art.