Rex Bramleigh (1923-2014), William Shephard Morrison (detail), 1964, Historic Memorials Collection, Parliament House Art Collection. View full image

1st Viscount Dunrossil
Governor-General, 2 February 1960 to 3 February 1961

William Morrison (1893-1961) became Australia’s Governor-General after a distinguished parliamentary career in Britain. The only Governor-General to die in office, he is remembered as energetic yet easy-going, with an egalitarian ethos that made him at home in Australia.¹

Born in Argyll, Scotland, Morrison studied in Edinburgh and acquired the nickname ‘Shakes’ due to his love of Shakespeare. He served in World War I and was awarded the MC. After the war he became a barrister while pursuing a political career. From 1922 to 1929 he was private secretary to Solicitor-General (later Attorney-General) Sir Thomas Inskip.² In 1923 and 1924, Morrison unsuccessfully contested the Western Isles elections for the Unionists. He married Katherine Swan in 1924 and they had four sons.

Morrison entered parliament as the Conservative member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury in 1929. He held this seat for the next 30 years while maintaining his legal career, becoming a KC in 1934 and Recorder of Walsall, Staffordshire, in 1935.³ In 1936 he was appointed minister of agriculture and fisheries and his subsequent roles included Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and Minister of Food, Postmaster-General, and Minister of Town and Country Planning. He was appointed a Privy Counsellor in 1936 and was elected Speaker in 1951, holding that position until 1959 when he retired with ill-health. He then gained a viscountcy, ‘the speaker’s usual title in retirement’,⁴ and appointment as GCMG. The Times later contended:

To points of order and procedural conundrums he brought a lambent clarity, and his judgments usually commanded acceptance. But in such matters he was always meticulous in acting as one who essentially was the servant of the House.⁵

Prime Minister Robert Menzies recommended Morrison, a longstanding friend, to become Australia’s 14th Governor-General. Morrison applied himself enthusiastically, though
when illness limited his capacity Lady Dunrossil regularly stepped in. Personable and good humoured, the Daily Telegraph remarked that his ‘time in office was marked by none of the straight-from-the-shoulder advice and good-natured criticism of our national foibles for which his predecessor Viscount Slim achieved fame’.⁶

Morrison died suddenly at Government House in 1961. He received a state funeral and was buried at Canberra’s Church of St John the Baptist. Victoria’s Governor, Sir Dallas Brooks, subsequently served as administrator.

Rex Bramleigh
Born in Melbourne, Rex Bramleigh (1923-2014) studied art at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. In 1942 he joined the RAAF, serving in Papua and New Guinea. After the war, Bramleigh opened an art school in South Melbourne and was actively involved with the Twenty Melbourne Painters Society, an art group in support of Max Meldrum’s tonalist approach to painting. He studied with Meldrum and also with Archibald Colquhoun, who stated that Bramleigh was among his most brilliant pupils. Bramleigh exhibited for the first time at the Athenaeum Gallery in Melbourne in 1950. By the mid-1950s, he had become secretary of the Victorian Artists’ Society and inaugural Director of the Mildura Art Gallery. Known for his atmospheric landscape scenes and still-life paintings, he was also regarded as an adept portraitist, with his self-portrait a finalist in the 1965 Archibald Prize. Bramleigh’s works are held in private and public collections throughout Australia, including the Castlemaine Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of NSW.⁷

William Shepherd Morrison
by Rex Bramleigh
1964
Oil on canvas
125.4 x 89.8 cm
Historic Memorials Collection, Parliament House Art Collection

References
1. Information in this biography has been taken from: B Carroll, Australia’s Governors-General: From Hopetoun to Jeffery, Rosenberg Publishing Pty Ltd, Kenthurst, NSW, 2004; D Smith, ‘Dunrossil, first Viscount (1893–1961)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1996; J Ramsden, ‘Morrison, William Shepherd, first Viscount Dunrossil (1893–1961), speaker of the House of Commons and governor-general of Australia’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Websites accessed 1 September 2021.
2. K Robbins, ‘Inskip, Thomas Walker Hobart, first Viscount Caldecote (1876–1947), lawyer and politician’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed 3 November 2021.
3. ‘Brilliant Career in Law and Parliament’, The Canberra Times, 4 February 1961, p. 2; AP Baggs, GC Baugh, CRJ Currie and DA Johnson, ‘Walsall: Local government’, in A History of the County of Stafford, Volume 17, ‘Offlow Hundred’ (Part), London, 1976, MW Greenslade, ed., pp. 208–20. Websites accessed 3 September 2021.
4. Ramsden, op. cit.
5. The Times, 3 February 1961, p. 12.
6. Carrol, op. cit, p. 134.
7. Information in this biography has been taken from: ‘About Rex Bramleigh’, Australian and New Zealand Art Sales Digest; L Thomas, ‘Gallery paintings for country tour’, The Herald, 17 April 1950, p. 5; ‘Art Notes: promising work in first exhibition’, The Age, 18 April 1950, p. 2; F Williams, ‘The Melbourne Art Scene and the Victorian Artists’ Society 1870–2020’, PhD thesis, Federation University Australia, 2020’. Websites accessed 26 May 2021.