Native Compound, Plaston E.T.

Here is shown a compound in Plaston, a small village that was found in the east of the province of Transvaal. Today it is now found in the Ehlanzeni District in South Africa. Carey Morgan’s use of pastels to create defined patches of colour on the rooves of the huts and the midground, skillfully conveys the strong dappled light that just manages to fall through the trees above.

Dorothy Carey Morgan
Dorothy Carey Morgan was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India, in 1886 as the daughter of a British solicitor. For a large portion of her life, Carey Morgan was based in London, living in the St Johns Wood and Lincoln’s Inn areas. Throughout the 1920s, she embarked upon voyages around central and Southern Africa, creating a number of pastel and watercolour pictures of the landscapes and people that she saw along her way.

By 1914, European empires had fully colonised the African continent - Britain was occupying vast swathes of southern, eastern and western Africa, and it is to these locations that Carey Morgan travelled. She visited the British colonies of Transvaal (a region of South Africa), Nyasaland (now Malawi), the Seychelles, and Portuguese Mozambique. Carey Morgan’s works on paper explore the vibrant natural landscapes of these locations. Often combining the sublime enormity of natural phenomenons, such as mountain ranges and vast lakes, with domestic scenes of every-day village life. The vibrancy of her chosen materials and considered composition convey an intense beauty in each scene, with man and nature living in harmony. 

Carey Morgan was not bound to the pastel and watercolour mediums, and was a talented etcher, engraver and sculptor too. Between 1909 and 1939, she exhibited with the Royal Society of Artists Birmingham, International Society, Walker Art Gallery Liverpool, The Royal Academy, Royal Institute of Painters and Water Colours and Royal Scottish Academy. Carey Morgan also created two works for the Scottish Women’s Hospital depicting two different view-points of L’Abbaye de Royaumont, a Cistercian abbey located in Val-d’Oise, France.

Dorothy Carey Morgan passed away in 1982, leaving behind a legacy as a well-travelled and worldly woman artist, with immense skill across a range of diverse artistic mediums.