The Oxford Union Murals: Morris's First Collaborative Art Project

The short answer

The murals depict Arthurian scenes drawn from Le Morte Darthur, the 15th-century English writer Sir Thomas Malory's account of King Arthur. The work was carried out by a group of friends rather than a single painter, and Morris was one of them, brought in by Rossetti after Rossetti had persuaded him to abandon architecture for a career as an artist (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

For Morris the project marks a turning point. He had trained in an architect's office and left it after only a few months, and Burne-Jones's connection with Dante Gabriel Rossetti soon led to Morris working with the Pre-Raphaelite circle (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

Background and context: the dates and names

The sequence begins at Oxford. In 1853 Morris went up to Exeter College at the University of Oxford, where he met Edward Jones, later known as the painter and designer Burne-Jones (Encyclopaedia Britannica). The friendship mattered immediately: Burne-Jones's connection with Dante Gabriel Rossetti soon led to Morris working with the Pre-Raphaelite circle.

Morris took his degree at Oxford in 1856 and then entered the Oxford office of the Gothic Revivalist architect G.E. Street (Encyclopaedia Britannica). The V&A records that he began work in Street's office and left after only eight months to begin a career as an artist. The Oxford Union decoration falls into this window of change, when Morris was moving from architecture towards painting under Rossetti's influence.

Rossetti's role is the hinge. Britannica states that he came to exert a powerful influence on Morris, and that it was Rossetti who persuaded him to give up architecture for painting and enrolled him among the friends decorating the Union walls. Without that enrolment, Morris's first collaborative art project does not happen.

Medieval art as preparation

The Arthurian subject of the murals did not come from nowhere. Britannica describes visits with Street and Burne-Jones to Belgium and northern France, where Morris first saw 15th-century paintings by Hans Memling and by Jan and Hubert Van Eyck, and the cathedrals of Amiens, Chartres and Rouen. These travels, the account continues, confirmed Morris in his love of medieval art.

That confirmed love of medieval art is the background that fed the choice of Malory for the Union walls. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, the Arthurian scenes were based on Le Morte Darthur by the 15th-century English writer Sir Thomas Malory, and the fit between the source and the painters' enthusiasms is close.

The V&A gives a related but differently framed episode: in 1855 Morris and Burne-Jones went on an architectural tour of northern France that made both men realise they were more committed to art than to the Church (Victoria and Albert Museum). Britannica places the French and Belgian cathedral tour, Rossetti's influence, and the Oxford Union decoration at the same period of Morris's life, while the V&A places a northern France architectural tour in 1855 as the moment he turned from the Church to art (Encyclopaedia Britannica and Victoria and Albert Museum). Whether this is the same journey as Britannica's visits with Street, or a separate trip, the supplied records do not settle.

What the evidence shows, and where it stops

Two of the main institutional sources place these events slightly differently, and the differences are worth stating plainly rather than smoothing over. Britannica and the V&A both connect the French and Belgian travels, Rossetti's influence and the Oxford Union decoration to the same period of Morris's life, but they frame the tour and its consequences in different ways.

Several questions remain open in the records used here. No supplied source dates the mural project precisely or names all the painters involved. None states which subjects Morris personally painted, or what condition the murals survive in. No museum catalogue entry for the murals themselves is available on this page, and no quotation from Morris about the project appears in the evidence.

One further caution concerns the tours. The Britannica narrative describes visits with Street and Burne-Jones; the V&A dates a tour with Burne-Jones to 1855 and does not mention Street in that connection. Which journey prompted which career decision requires further sources, and this page does not guess.

Common misconceptions

The first misconception is that the murals were a Morris commission in any usual sense. The evidence presents them as a group decoration by a band of friends, with Rossetti as the organiser who enrolled Morris. Treating the scheme as Morris's personal project overstates his role at this early date.

The second is that the Arthurian subject was chosen at random, or that the murals belong to Morris's later design career. The subject came from Malory, and the project belongs to the brief period when Morris was a painter rather than a designer. Of his easel painting only one work survives, La Belle Iseult (Encyclopaedia Britannica), which shows how short that painting career was.

A third misconception is that everything about the project is firmly documented. As the table above shows, the two main sources frame the French travels differently, and the murals are neither precisely dated nor fully inventoried in the records supplied here. Confidence should match the evidence.

What the murals meant for Morris's later work

The Oxford Union decoration brought Morris into a shared undertaking: Rossetti persuaded him to give up architecture for painting and enrolled him among the band of friends decorating the Union walls (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Burne-Jones's connection with Dante Gabriel Rossetti had soon led to Morris working with the Pre-Raphaelite circle, and the Union project placed him working alongside those friends.

The project also belongs to the period when Morris was a painter. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, only one easel painting by Morris survives, La Belle Iseult. After the Union walls, his creative energy moved elsewhere, and the murals stand near the start of that redirection.

For more on that single surviving oil, see more on La Belle Iseult. And for where Morris's visual imagination went once painting gave way to pattern, the Morris's art beyond pattern guide follows the whole arc of his work.