Works by acclaimed Welsh artist Ceri Richards offered at auction
Nation.Cymru staff
Seven lots by Welsh artist Ceri Richards are being offered at auction, including a work inspired by Debussy with an estimate of £8,000–£12,000.
The Dunvant-born painter features in Olympia Auctions’ online sale, From the Studio: Works from Eighteen Artists’ Estates, with bidding closing on Sunday, October 11, from 3pm.
Among the works is La Cathédrale Engloutie, Jeux de Vagues, part of Richards’ response to the French composer’s piano prelude. Others include Pianist, estimated at £3,000–£5,000, and The Beekeeper, at £1,000–£1,500.
Born in 1903, Richards grew up near Swansea in a family where music and poetry were part of everyday life. His father, a tinplate worker, was also a choirmaster and poet who encouraged his children to read and play music.
Richards became an accomplished pianist, and music remained an important influence on his art, alongside the poetry of Dylan Thomas and Vernon Watkins.
He described Debussy as a “visual composer”, writing that “he gives me a feeling of the sounds of nature, as Monet does”.
Richards studied at Swansea School of Art before attending the Royal College of Art in London. A summer school at Gregynog Hall in mid Wales introduced him to paintings by Van Gogh, Cézanne and Monet in the collection of sisters Gwendoline and Margaret Davies.
He served as head of painting at Cardiff School of Art between 1940 and 1944 and was commissioned during the Second World War to draw tinplate workers in south Wales. After returning to London, he taught lithography at the Slade School of Art.
Richards represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1962, where he won the Einaudi Painting Prize. He died in 1971 and was later the subject of a retrospective at the Tate Gallery.
The sale is a timed auction, allowing buyers to place bids online before each lot’s deadline rather than taking part in a live auction room.
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