Richard Eurich, R.A.

Oil/Panel

Given by the artist to his nephew as a wedding present, September 1953;
Sotheby's, London, 16 February 2005, lot 156

The panel has three vertical cracks approximately 1½ in. from the upper edge. No signs of retouching under ultraviolet light. Contained in a simple modern frame under glass; unexamined out of frame.
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Born in Yorkshire and a student at Bradford School of Arts & Crafts and the Slade School in London, Richard Eurich lived and worked for most of his life near Southampton and the Solent, where he developed a unique style of profound and poetic seascapes and beachscapes.  Advised by fellow artist Christopher Wood to ‘paint what you love and damn all fashions that come and go’, his work reflects this ideal, most noticeable in the melancholic, at times surreal depictions of Britain’s coastal landscapes. Another important strand of Eurich’s career was his work as an Official War Artist, seconded to the Royal Navy in 1941 where he remained until the end of the war. His wartime paintings achieved high acclaim, such as The Withdrawal from Dunkirk (1941, National Maritime Museum, London) and Survivors from a Torpedoed Ship (1942, Tate) described by Winston Churchill, who used it as a book illustration, as ‘one of the best paintings to come out of the war’.

In the present work, we see Eurich in lighter mood, with an unusually stronger focus on the figurative element; here boys playing with paper boats under the arch of bridge, at the end of which is a washing-line blowing in the breeze. Above the bridge can be seen a town rolling across the hills in the distance. Painted in 1951, the same year as Eurich’s retrospective exhibition at Bradford, it belongs to a small series of work of this nature, two years after which he was elected a Royal Academician.