GEORGE RICHMOND, R
(Lots )
Over a long working life George Richmond enjoyed the friendship and respect of many major English artists of the 19th Century. He was even asked more than once to be director of the National Gallery, a request he politely turned down.
Richmond entered the Royal Academy schools in 1824 and in the following year met William Blake. Like his friend Samuel Palmer, he was deeply impressed by Blake's art and his spirituality. Following Palmer and several other friends he retreated to Shoreham in Kent to draw landscape and imaginative biblical subjects, all inspired by the example of Blake. In the summer of 1827 he temporarily left Shoreham to go to the bedside of the ailing Blake and was present at his death - Richmond was then only just eighteen years old. Following his marriage in 1831 Richmond's need to support a family led him to capitalise on his talent for portraiture, but he never lost his love of landscape and his ambition to paint serious literary and biblical subjects. He made several visits to Italy, the first being with Samuel and Hannah Palmer on their Italian honeymoon at the end of 1837. He was back in Rome in November 1840, when he met John Ruskin at Joseph Severn's lodgings.
George Richmond, R.A. (London 1809-1896)
Study of a man gazing down
Details
George Richmond, R.A. (London 1809-1896)
Study of a man gazing down
pen and brown ink, on paper
7 x 5¼ in. (17.8 x 13.4 cm.); and An unframed portrait of George Eliot, in profile to the left, by the same hand (2)
Study of a man gazing down
pen and brown ink, on paper
7 x 5¼ in. (17.8 x 13.4 cm.); and An unframed portrait of George Eliot, in profile to the left, by the same hand (2)
Exhibited
London, W/S Fine Art, Summer, 2011, no. 46.