Ceri Richards (1903-1971)

Richards was born in 1903 in the village of Dunvant, In 1921, at the age of 18, he enrolled full-time at the Swansea College of Art, then under the direction of William Grant Murray. During his time at the College he spent less time in painting than in drawing from classical casts and studying industrial design and graphics. The strongest impact on him during these years appears to have been the week's summer school in 1923, which he spent under the direction of Hugh Blaker at Gregynog Hall, the country house of Gwendoline and Margaret Davies, where he first saw the canvases of Renoir, Van Gogh, Monet, Cézanne, Corot and Daumier, the sculpture of Rodin and sheets of old-master and modern drawings. The experience confirmed him in his vocation; and in the same year he applied for, and won, a scholarship to study in London at the Royal College of Art. Richards entered the Royal College of Art in 1924. Afterwards Richards spent most of