Richard Eurich

Details of Exhibition held 15 March - 26 April 2003

Southampton Institute's Millais Gallery is holding an exhibition of work by Richard Eurich, OBE, RA. This exhibition marks the centenary of his birth on 14 March 1903 and will be open to the public from 15 March to 26 April 2003. Rarely seen works of art drawn from private collections, representing the span of Eurich�s long career, will be on display and a lavishly illustrated publication will accompany the exhibition.

Until his death in 1992, Richard Eurich was regarded as one of Britain's leading figurative artists in a tradition which stretches from Hogarth and Turner, through the Pre-Raphaelites, to his own contemporaries.

He belonged to a highly talented generation of British artists, all born in 1903, including Graham Sutherland, John Piper, Barbara Hepworth, Ceri Richards and Eric Ravilious, and was their equal in the originality, perceptiveness and quality of his work.

Eurich was elected to the Royal Academy in 1942 on the strength of his already considerable achievements: his first solo exhibition at a leading Mayfair gallery in 1929; his selection to represent Great Britain at the Carnegie International Exhibition, Pittsburgh between 1936 and 1939; the purchase of a painting by the Chantrey Bequest in 1939; and his appointment as an Official War Artist in 1940.

His wartime paintings were acclaimed nationally for their realism and understatement, and examples of his work were subsequently acquired by leading galleries throughout Britain, as well as in Canada, Australia and the United States.

Eurich taught part-time at Camberwell School of Art, arguably the country�s leading school of figurative art, for nearly 20 years and subsequently at the Royal Academy Schools.

Richard Eurich was brought up in Yorkshire and left only in order to study at the Slade School of Art, London.

In 1934 he and his wife moved to Dibden Purlieu on Southampton Water where they settled permanently.

Much of Eurich's work was inspired by the coastal scenery of the South, though he continued to paint both landscapes and townscapes of his beloved Yorkshire during annual visits to family in the North.

Some of Eurich's paintings verge on the surreal, but all of his work reveals his heightened awareness and wonderment at the world around him.

Richard Eurich (1903 - 1992) Visionary Artist includes a major new publication produced by Southampton Institute in collaboration with Paul Holberton publishing, with essays written by the curators Professor Edward Chaney and Christine Clearkin, and contributions from other distinguished historians of twentieth century British art.