Ceri Richards
Encyclopedia
Biography
Richards was born in the village of DunvantDunvant
Dunvant is a suburban district in the City and County of Swansea, Wales, and falls within the Dunvant ward. It is situated in a valley some 4.5 miles west of Swansea city centre.-History:...
, near Swansea
Swansea
Swansea is a coastal city and county in Wales. Swansea is in the historic county boundaries of Glamorgan. Situated on the sandy South West Wales coast, the county area includes the Gower Peninsula and the Lliw uplands...
, the son of Thomas Coslett Richards and Sarah Richards (born Jones). He and his younger brother and sister, Owen and Esther, were brought up in a highly cultured, working-class environment. His father, an employee of a tinplate foundry in Gowerton
Gowerton
The village of Gowerton is situated about 4 miles north west of Swansea city centre, Wales. Gowerton is often known as the gateway to Gower. Gowerton's original name was Ffosfelin...
, was active in the local church, wrote poetry in Welsh and English and for many years conducted the Dunvant Excelsior Male Voice Choir. All three children were taught to play the piano, and became familiar with the works of Bach and Handel in the cycle of Christian celebration. In later years music would be an important stimulus to Richards's painting - as would his youthful sensitivity to the landscapes of Gower
Gower Peninsula
Gower or the Gower Peninsula is a peninsula in south Wales, jutting from the coast into the Bristol Channel, and administratively part of the City and County of Swansea. Locally it is known as "Gower"...
and the cycles of nature.
Although Richards's mother came from a family of craftsmen, church and village provided the boy with little artistic stimulus, yet at Gowerton Intermediate School
Gowerton Comprehensive School
Gowerton School is a public secondary school located in the heart of Gowerton village, near Swansea, United Kingdom.-Intermediate School:The school opened in 5 Oct 1896 in Talbot Street as a co-educationasl Intermediate school under Welsh Intermediate Education Act 1889...
he drew constantly and won local competitions. When he left school to become apprenticed to a firm of electricians in Swansea, he devoted his evenings to studying engineering draughtsmanship at Swansea College of Technology and drawing at the Swansea College of Art (now Swansea Metropolitan University).
In 1921, at the age of 18, Richards enrolled full-time at the Swansea College of Art, then under the direction of William Grant Murray. Yet during his time at the College he spent less time in painting than in drawing from classical casts and studying industrial design and graphics. The strongest impact on him during these years appears to have been the week's summer school in 1923, which he spent under the direction of Hugh Blaker at Gregynog Hall, the country house of Gwendoline and Margaret Davies
Margaret Davies
Margaret Sidney Davies , was a Welsh art collector and patron of the arts. With her sister Gwendoline, she bequeathed a total of 260 works, particularly strong in Impressionist and 20th-century art, which formed the basis of the present-day National Museum Wales' international collection...
, where he first saw the canvases of Renoir, Van Gogh, Monet, Cézanne, Corot and Daumier, the sculpture of Rodin and sheets of old-master and modern drawings. The experience confirmed him in his vocation; and in the same year he applied for, and won, a scholarship to study in London at the Royal College of Art
Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art is an art school located in London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of Master of Arts , Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy...
.
Richards entered the Royal College of Art
Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art is an art school located in London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of Master of Arts , Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy...
in 1924.
Afterwards Richards spent most of his life in London, apart from a period teaching art in Cardiff
Cardiff
Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...
.
In 1929 he married Frances Clayton, a fellow artist. His work gradually moved towards surrealism
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
after exposure to the work of Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
and Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky was an influential Russian painter and art theorist. He is credited with painting the first purely-abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics...
. He was also a talented musician, and music is a theme for much of his artwork. From 1959 onwards, he made prints for the Curwen Press
Curwen Press
The Curwen Press was founded by the Reverend John Curwen in 1863 to publish sheet music for the "tonic sol-fa" system. The Press was based in Plaistow, Newham, east London, England, where Curwen was a pastor from 1844...
. One of the high points of his career was the Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
of 1962, where he was a prizewinner.
Many of his works are in the Tate
Tate
-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...
collection, in London.http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=1836&page=1 The Glynn Vivian Art Gallery
Glynn Vivian Art Gallery
The Glynn Vivian Art Gallery is the public art gallery of the city of Swansea, Wales. The gallery is situated in Alexandra Road, near Swansea railway station, opposite the old Swansea Central Library and near Swansea Central police station...
in Swansea also holds a collection (where Richards' first solo exhibition took place in 1930). Good examples of his work are also to be found in the gallery of the National Museum Cardiff
National Museum Cardiff
National Museum Cardiff is a museum and art gallery in Cardiff, Wales. The museum is part of the wider network of Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales...
and the Pallant House Gallery
Pallant House Gallery
Pallant House Gallery is an art gallery in Chichester, West Sussex, England. It houses one of the best collections of 20th century British art in the world....
, Chichester
Chichester
Chichester is a cathedral city in West Sussex, within the historic County of Sussex, South-East England. It has a long history as a settlement; its Roman past and its subsequent importance in Anglo-Saxon times are only its beginnings...
.
Select Works
- Still Life with Music (1933)
- The Sculptor and his Object (1934)
- The Sculptor in his Studio (1937)
- The Female Contains All Qualities (1937)
- Blossoms (1940)
- The Coster Woman (1943)
- The force that through the green fuse drives the flower (three lithographs) (1947)
- The Pianist (1948)
- Interior with piano, woman and child painting (1949)
- Trafalgar Square (1951)
- Black Apple of Gower (1952)
- Beethoven and St Cecilia (1953)
- Do not go gentle into that good night (1956) [2 versions]
- Deposition (1958)
- La Cathedrale engloutie (1957–1962) [series]
- Poissons d'or (1963)
- Claire de lune (1967)
- White Blossom (1968)
- Elegy for Vernon WatkinsVernon WatkinsVernon Phillips Watkins , was a British poet, and a translator and painter. He was a close friend of Dylan Thomas, who described him as "the most profound and greatly accomplished Welshman writing poems in English"....
(1971)
Further reading
- M. Gooding, Ceri Richards (2002), ISBN 0906506204 - described at http://www.welshartsarchive.org.uk/richards_article.htm [by Richards's son-in-law]
- Ceri Richards and Dylan Thomas - Keys To Transformation A Monograph by Richard Burns (1981)
- Ceri Richards Drawings to Poems by Dylan Thomas (1980)
- J. Rothenstein, Modern English Painters Wood to Hockney (1974)
- R. Sanesi, The Graphic Work of Ceri Richards (1973)
- J. Ormond, 'Ceri Richards root and branch', in Planet; 10 (1972 February / March)
- Homage to Ceri Richards 1903-1971 [Fischer Fine Art catalogue] (1972]
- Music in Drama (1958)