Charles Ricketts

Deposition from the Cross

exhibited 1915

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Not on display

Artist: Charles Ricketts 1866–1931
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 711 × 571 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by Viscount Bearsted through the Art Fund 1918
Reference: N03325

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