The Sculptor's Landscape

Details

Ceri Richards (1903-1971)
The Sculptor's Landscape
signed, inscribed and dated 'The Sculptor's Landscape Ceri Richards 1944' (on the canvas overlap)
oil on canvas
20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm.)

Provenance

Acquired directly from the artist and thence by descent.

Special notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

Lot Essay

In December 1938, Ceri Richards purchased Max Ernst's painting The Bride of the Wind (1926) from the London Gallery. The painting had belonged to Paul Eluard and subsequently Roland Penrose. The work allowed Richards to tap into the spirit of 1920s Surrealism and realise 'how rich in content is our subconscious or submerged self and how fertile the free play of thought can be.' Richards was in the Home Guard throughout the war, managing to work sporadically. The destructive energy of the war and the menace of the Blitz precipitated an interest in metamorphosis, constant flux and elemental chaos. The present work is closely related to The Sculptor's Landscape (Homage to Henry Moore) from 1943 in the Glynn Vivian Museum and Art Gallery, Swansea and to Welsh Landscape, 1945, illustrated in Mel Gooding, Ceri Richards, Cameron & Hollis: 2002, (p. 66).

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