Williams was born in
Cowbridge,
Wales, the eldest child of Reverend M. P. Williams, at that time headmaster of
Cowbridge Grammar School. The family moved in 1889 to
Rotherfield Peppard near
Henley-on-Thames when Reverend Williams became Rector there. Morris studied at the
Slade School of Fine Art in London. He continued his studies in Paris, where he met his first wife, the noted sculptor
Alice Meredith Williams. They married in 1906 and lived in
Edinburgh where Morris worked part-time as an Art Master at
Fettes College and as an artist and prolific illustrator of children's books of myth, folklore and history. He served as an officer in the
Welsh Regiment and The
Royal Engineers in the
First World War, and during this time drew many sketches of trench life and battlefield destruction, some of which were worked up into paintings after the war and now hang in regimental museums and in the
National Army Museum. In 2017 a selection of his wartime work was published along with the couple's wartime correspondence. After the war, he and Alice worked together on many war memorials. Morris designed the metal frieze of naval and military figures, modelled by Alice, for the shrine of the
Scottish National War Memorial at
Edinburgh Castle. living in and around
North Tawton. Alice died in 1934 and Williams remarried in 1936, remaining in Devon for the rest of his life and ending his days in
Romansleigh in
North Devon. Williams worked in landscape and genre painting,
stained glass, engraving and illustration. He exhibited at the
Royal Academy in London and at the
Royal Scottish Academy. Several of his works are held by museums and galleries in
Liverpool and by
National Galleries of Scotland. ==References==