Shadows in a Room, Version II

Details

Ceri Richards (1903-1971)
Shadows in a Room, Version II
signed and dated 'Ceri Richards/'50' (lower right)
oil on canvas
28 x 25½ in. (71.1 x 64.8 cm.)

Provenance

Purchased by Sir Colin and Lady Anderson at the 1950 exhibition, and by descent.

Exhibited

London, Redfern Gallery, Ceri Richards: Exhibition of Recent Paintings, May - June 1950, no. 8.
London, Tate Gallery, Exhibition of the Contemporary Art Society, catalogue not traced.
China, Britain-China Friendship Association, Seventy Years of British Painting, 1960, no. 59.

Special notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent. These lots have been imported from outside the EU for sale using a Temporary Import regime. Import VAT is payable (at 5%) on the Hammer price. VAT is also payable (at 20%) on the buyer’s Premium on a VAT inclusive basis. When a buyer of such a lot has registered an EU address but wishes to export the lot or complete the import into another EU country, he must advise Christie's immediately after the auction.

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Lot Essay

The present work was painted three years before Ceri Richards would receive a commission from Sir Colin Anderson to paint a mural decoration for the first class restaurant of the Orsova (1954), the ocean liner built by Anderson's Orient Line shipping company. Sir Colin wrote in the introduction to the catalogue for the 1972 exhibition, Homage to Ceri Richards, 'Beyond being the most steady friend, Ceri had the extra quality of being at the same time a fount of visual pleasures and surprises. It was an uncommon admixture of quiet efficiency with an intense poetic reaction to outsize stimuli. Few painters can have been more inspired by music and poetry than he - but then, he could equally have made a career in music. This range of responsiveness explains the width of stylistic variation within his total work. He never dreamed of denying the inspiration he had from other artists. He honoured them too much for that and, besides, he transmuted these experiences so that the resulting works flew unmistakably on strong Ceri-given wings' (Sir Colin Anderson, quoted in exhibition catalogue, Homage to Ceri Richards 1903-1971, London, Fischer Fine Art, 1972, p. 21).

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