Ceri Richards

F.E. McWilliam, and thence by family descent to the present owner

Mel Gooding, Ceri Richards, Cameron & Hollis, Moffat, 2002, illustrated p. 53

London, Leger Gallery, Paintings and Drawings by Ceri Richards, 1942, no.3

London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Ceri Richards: a Retrospective Exhibition, 1960, no. 13, illustrated plate VI

London, Marlborough Gallery, Ceri Richards Retrospective Exhibition, June 1965, no. 10

Edinburgh, Edinburgh International Festival, Ceri Richards, 24 August - 14 September 1975, no. 12

London, Tate Gallery, Ceri Richards, 22 July - 6 September 1981, no. 35

On the reverse of the backboard, there is the name and address of F.E. McWilliam, the great Irish sculptor. He was the first and longtime owner of the present work, and it has stayed in his family ever since, acquiring it directly from Ceri Richards in the 1940s. McWilliam and Richards were great friends and together with Henry Moore, they were inspired by travels to Paris in the 1930s, and took influence from Brancusi, Picasso and Arp and importantly to the present work, the surrealist movement.

One can see Richards' interest in the surreal in The Pianist, as a biomorphic and abstracted female figure, a popular surrealist trope, stands by a piano: a seemingly chance encounter between the two. The work was also painted only a few years after Richards' involvement in the International Surrealist Exhibition in London in 1936. The presence of the piano may also link to Richards' own passion for music, himself a talented musician, and music later went on to become an important source of inspiration in the Artist's later work.

McWilliam also owned one the paintings that Richards produced for the Contemporary Art Society's The Seasons exhibition in 1956, which was also exhibited at the Redfern gallery, reproduced in colour in Marcel Brion and others, Art since 1945, 1959, pl.117.