Beach with Bathers

Catalogue entry

T03217 BEACH WITH BATHERS 1969

Inscribed ‘R. Eurich’ 69' bottom right
Oil on hardboard, 16 × 48 (40.7 × 122)
Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1981
Prov: Purchased from the artist by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1971
Exh: Richard Eurich: Recent Paintings, Arthur Tooth & Sons, September–October 1970 (9, repr.); RA, May–July 1971 (92); Richard Eurich, RA: A Retrospective Exhibition, Bradford Art Gallery, November 1979–January 1980 and subsequent tour to Fine Art Society, Glasgow, February 1980, Fine Art Society, London, March–April, and Southampton Art Gallery, April–June (71, repr.)

Richard Eurich has been interested in the sea and the sea shore as subjects for painting since as a youth he visited the Chesil Bank while on holidays with cousins at Weymouth. There he learnt to make notes and drawings which could be used years later as a basis for making oil paintings. Eurich has lived at Dibden Purlieu in the New Forest since 1934 and has on occasions visited Lepe, on the Solent, where oil tankers pass on their way to or from the nearby oil refinery at Fawley.

Eurich painted ‘Beach with Bathers’ at his studio in Dibden Purlieu, from imagination, though he ‘probably’ consulted drawings, made perhaps years before, of ships and the shore. He has from time to time used a panoramic format for pictures, in which the width of the work may be more than twice the height of the work. He first used this format in two paintings of 1937, ‘Mousehole Harbour, Cornwall’ 24 × 65in., now in the Aberdeen Art Gallery, and ‘Porthleven, Cornwall’, 19 × 69 1/2in., in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

This catalogue entry is approved by the artist and is based on discussions with him and the compiler on 21 May 1982.

Published in:
The Tate Gallery 1980-82: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions, London 1984

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