Frances Richards (British artist)

Frances Richards née Clayton, (1 August 1903 - 14 February 1985) was a British painter, embroiderer and illustrator.

For the Canadian artist, see Frances Richards (Canadian artist).
Frances Richards
Born
Frances Clayton

(1903-08-01)1 August 1903
Burslem, England
Died14 February 1985(1985-02-14) (aged 81)
NationalityBritish
Education
Known for
Spouse(s)Ceri Richards

Biography

Frances Clayton was born in 1903 in Burslem, in the Staffordshire Potteries, the daughter of John Clayton, a pottery artist.[1][2] Both sides of the Clayton family were from long-established pottery working families.[3]

Richards attended Burslem School of Art from 1919 to 1924, initially on a part-time basis. She worked as a pottery designer at the Paragon China company while a student at Burslem.[2][3]:17 She won an annual national scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London for students who had worked in industry.[3] She studied at the RCA from 1924 to 1927 and specialised in tempera and fresco painting and studied the writings of the early Italian renaissance painter Cennino Cennini.[4][3]:17 While at the RCA Richards won a sculpture prize and demonstrated mould-making techniques to other students.[3] She continued to paint in tempera after leaving the college.

At the Royal College she met the Welsh artist Ceri Richards. They married in July 1929 and had two daughters, Rachel (born 1932) and Rhiannon (born 1945). Rachel married the paleontologist Colin Patterson.[5]

From 1928 to 1939 Richards worked as a teacher in the textile department at the Camberwell School of Art.[6][7] During the 1930s Richards exhibited with the London Group and in 1937 produced decorations for the P&O cruise liner Orcades.[7] During World War Two, Richards and her husband moved to Alphamstone in Essex and she taught at Furzedown Training College in Tooting.[3] Later in the war, the college was relocated to Cardiff where, by coincidence, Ceri Richards had taken the post of Head of Painting at the Cardiff School of Art.[3] After the war Frances returned to work at Camberwell School of Art, and taught there for almost 30 years during which time she also worked at the Chelsea School of Art.[4][6]

During the 1950s and 1960s Richards was a regular exhibitor at several commercial galleries in London, including the Hanover Gallery, the Leicester Galleries and, in particular, the Redfern Gallery.[6][3] Richards was a keen reader of poetry, particularly the work of William Blake, and her exhibition catelogues often contained poems or verse.[8] In 1980 the Campbell & Franks Gallery in London held a large retrospective exhibition with paintings, drawings, engravings, embroideries and early tempera works from over fifty years of her artistic career.[8] The Tate in London holds several pieces by Richards including her 1957 tempera painting left and Right of the Long Path.[8]

She died on 14 February 1985.[4]

In 2019 an exhibition of her work was held in the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea.[9]

Influences

Richards admired the early Italian renaissance painters Giotto, Piero della Francesca and Fra Angelico; the British artists Samuel Palmer, William Blake and David Jones; and the poetry of the Psalms, the Song of Solomon, George Herbert and Arthur Rimbaud.[4][3]:18

Her work appears to have been little influenced by her husband's painting. Mel Gooding writes:[3]:18

...for over fifty years her own quiet and formalised figurative art was unaffected by her daily closeness to the extravagant and sometimes violent drama of [Ceri] Richards's painting.

Artforms
  • Painting, including tempera
  • Illustration
  • Printmaking
  • Embroidered fabric panels (toiles brodées)

Works illustrated

Exhibitions

Richards's work has been shown in many solo and two-person exhibitions, including:

  • 1945 (1945): Redfern Gallery, London[4][7]
  • 1949 (1949): Toiles brodées by Frances Richards, Redfern Gallery, London[11][12][7]
  • 1950 (1950): Toiles brodées by Frances Richards, Hannover Gallery, London[13][14]
  • 1954 (1954): Redfern Gallery, London[4][15][7]
  • 1964 (1964): Tempera Printing by Frances Richards, Leicester Galleries, London[16]
  • 1967 (1967): Solo exhibition, Oriel Fach, St Davids[7]
  • 1969 (1969): Leicester Galleries, London[17]
  • 1972 (1972): Ceri Richards Paintings and Drawings, Frances Richards Flower Paintings, Aldeburgh Festival, Snape, Suffolk[18][7]
  • 1975 (1975): Ceri and Frances Richards Paintings and Drawings, Patrick Searle Gallery, London[19]
  • 1978 (1978): Paintings by Frances Richards (concurrent with Ceri Richards Retrospective Exhibition), Bruton Gallery, Bruton, Somerset[20]
  • 1980 (1980): Frances Richards, paintings, drawings, engravings, lithographs, embroideries, from 1926 to 1979, Campbell and Franks Gallery, London[8][21]
  • 1981 (1981): Frances Richards and Jonathon Gibbs, Holsworthy Gallery, London[22][23]
  • 2019 (2019): Frances Richards: An Artist Apart, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea[9]

Public collections

Richards' work is in public collections, including:

References
  1. Chamot, Mary; Farr, Dennis; Butlin, Martin (1964). The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture. London: Oldbourne Press / Tate Gallery. Retrieved 25 October 2013.
  2. "The Pianist". Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved 25 October 2013.
  3. Gooding, Mel (2002). Ceri Richards. Moffat: Cameron & Hollis. ISBN 0-906506-20-4.
  4. "Obituary Frances Richards Painter and illustrator". The Times. 19 February 1985. p. 14. Retrieved 30 October 2013 – via HighBeam.
  5. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. 2004.
  6. Geoff Hassell (1995). Camberwell School of Arts & Crafts Its Students and Teachers 1943-1960. Antique Collectors' Club. ISBN 1 85149 180 5.
  7. Peter W Jones & Isabel Hitchman (2015). Post War to Post Modern: A Dictionary of Artists in Wales. Gomer Press. ISBN 978 184851 8766.CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
  8. Foster, Alicia (2004). Tate Women Artists. London: Tate Publishing. ISBN 1-85437-311-0.
  9. "Frances Richards: An Artist Apart". Cyngor Abertawe / Swansea Council. Retrieved 6 July 2019.
  10. "Les Illuminations - illustrations to prose poems by Arthur Rimbaud". Tate. Retrieved 25 October 2013.
  11. "Classified advertisements: Art Exhibitions". The Times (London). 25 March 1949. p. 8.
  12. Review in: Eurich, Richard (26 March 1949). "Redfern Gallery". The Times (London). p. 6.
  13. "Classified advertisements". The Observer (London). 17 December 1950. p. 7.
  14. Review in: "Shoemaker-painter". The Manchester Guardian. 15 December 1950. p. 3.
  15. "Classified advertisements". The Observer (London). 14 November 1954. p. 11.
  16. "Classified advertisements". The Observer (London). 23 February 1964. p. 25.
  17. Review in: Percival, John (26 September 1969). "Classical Fonteyn". The Times (London). p. 8.
  18. "Classified advertisements: Art Exhibitions". The Times (London). 9 June 1972. p. 9.
  19. "Classified advertisements: Art Exhibitions". The Times (London). 12 March 1975. p. 13.
  20. "Classified advertisements: Art Galleries". The Times (London). 3 June 1978. p. 13.
  21. "Court Circular". The Times (London). 2 May 1980. p. 16.
  22. "Entertainments Guide". The Times (London). 21 April 1981. p. 21.
  23. Review in: Russell Taylor, John (5 May 1981). "Works that live dangerously". The Times (London). p. 7.
  24. "Frances Richards". Tate. Retrieved 25 October 2013.
  25. "Tate Acquisitions". The Times (London). 12 June 1961. p. 8.
  26. "Richards, Frances". National Museum Wales. Retrieved 25 October 2013.
  27. "Metamorphosis by Frances Richards". Art UK. Retrieved 25 October 2013.
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