Frances Richards

Catalogue entry

T00423 LEFT AND RIGHT OF THE LONG PATH 1957

Inscr. ‘FR’ b.r.
Tempera on gesso on hardboard, 18×12 (46×30·5).
Purchased from the artist (Grant-in-Aid) 1961.
Exh: Artists of Fame and of Promise, I, Leicester Galleries, June–August 1957 (60).

The artist wrote (3 June 1961) that ‘the ideas in the painting and in quite a number of works of mine done between 1957, 1959–60 were partly the result of some illustrations I did for “Les Illuminations” by Rimbaud (not published). The poem “Childhood” and another “Mystic” influenced a good many of the paintings.... Other factors of influence are: (psychological) my own childhood memories of withdrawal - isolation and a great love of poetry.’

A smaller version of this subject, ‘Childhood’, also shown at the Leicester Galleries in 1957 (61), was purchased by Roger Senhouse. The artist has also produced many fabric collages of the same subject, the largest of which is owned by Douglas Glass. She was trained in a tempera medium whilst studying at the R.C.A. and one or two early tempera paintings of 1925 are closely linked in feeling and execution to the recent paintings.

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, II

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