Charles Ricketts

Catalogue entry

N03325 DEPOSITION FROM THE CROSS c. 1915

Inscr. ‘CR’ in monogram b.r., and on back of canvas ‘The Deposition C. Ricketts Red Cross Sale 1918’.
Canvas, 28×22 1/2 (71×57) painted surface turned over 1 1/2 (4) on the left and 2 (5) on the right.
Presented by Viscount Bearsted through the National Art-Collections Fund 1918.
Coll: Sent by the artist to the Red Cross Sale, Christie's, 13 April 1918 (902), bt. Viscount Bearsted.
Exh: International Society, spring 1915 (31).
Lit: Ricketts, 1939, p.292; Sturge Moore, 1933, n.p.

One of a number of religious subjects painted by Ricketts, though, as Sturge Moore pointed out, he was an unbeliever. A ‘Moonlight Deposition’ is mentioned as early as 1904 in Selfportrait, p.112, but that may have been another rendering of the subject, probably the ‘Descent from the Cross’ exhibited at the International Society, 1905 (232). A ‘Crucifixion’ is in York Minster.

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

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