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Lot Essay
Dating from 1944, the present work was painted four years after the subject matter of a female piano player within a domestic setting first appeared in Richards' work. It was to become a subject that he would explore compulsively throughout his career, painting a huge range of works depicting this subject matter. Richard often based these paintings of pianists on his observations of his daughters playing the piano. In the present work, the seated figure is bent over the piano in concentration and the movement of her hands over the keys is emphasised by her billowing white sleeves.
Mel Gooding comments, 'the artist's portrayal of musical rapture is in essence a recognition of the grace that art confers on those who acknowledge its power. Richards' own deep love and knowledge of music, as both executant and listener, inform his treatment of the subject of music in a room, just as his vocation as a painter motivated what was to be a sustained creative engagement with subjects drawn from everyday life ... The enclosed and crowded world of these paintings is rich in signs and indications ... They stand for a life enjoyed, even in its way luxurious, in the sense that they are things the need for which is a matter of feeling and spirit; they are beautiful things, the accoutrements of a civilised life in a sheltered space. In the house on Wandsworth Common, Richards was himself surrounded by the female family of his wife and two daughters, and by objects familiar and valued. These paintings with their reverberant colourism, their decorative arabesque vigour, their fullness of good things, sweet sound and floral perfumes, reflect that contained domesticity. They are deeply tender in feeling, but detached in mood' (Ceri Richards, Moffat, 2002, pp. 90, 97).
Mel Gooding comments, 'the artist's portrayal of musical rapture is in essence a recognition of the grace that art confers on those who acknowledge its power. Richards' own deep love and knowledge of music, as both executant and listener, inform his treatment of the subject of music in a room, just as his vocation as a painter motivated what was to be a sustained creative engagement with subjects drawn from everyday life ... The enclosed and crowded world of these paintings is rich in signs and indications ... They stand for a life enjoyed, even in its way luxurious, in the sense that they are things the need for which is a matter of feeling and spirit; they are beautiful things, the accoutrements of a civilised life in a sheltered space. In the house on Wandsworth Common, Richards was himself surrounded by the female family of his wife and two daughters, and by objects familiar and valued. These paintings with their reverberant colourism, their decorative arabesque vigour, their fullness of good things, sweet sound and floral perfumes, reflect that contained domesticity. They are deeply tender in feeling, but detached in mood' (Ceri Richards, Moffat, 2002, pp. 90, 97).