Lot 42: Charles De Sousy Ricketts, R.A. (1866-1931)

Charles De Sousy Ricketts, R.A. (1866-1931)
Orpheus and Eurydice
signed with monogram (lower left) and again signed with monogram (on the reverse)
oil on canvas
53 x 42 in. (135 x 107 cm.)

Bradford Art Gallery
London, Royal Academy, Summer Exhibition, 1923, no. 203.
Manchester, Works by Orpen, McEvoy, Ricketts, 1933, no. 76.
London, Royal Academy, Commemorative Exhibition of the Works of the Late Members, 1933, no. 339.

Sir Edmund Davis, London.
E.P. Bateson.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, New York, 23 May 1996, lot 224.

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Charles Ricketts was preoccupied with the theme of the tragic hero, left isolated and lonely, as seen in his depictions of Montezuma, Don Juan and The Betrayal of Christ.

The more common representation of the Orpheus and Eurydice story is of the moment of their separation as she follows him out of Hades, but the present work, painted circa 1922, depicts different moments. When Ricketts was finishing the picture for the 1923 Summer Show at the Royal Academy, he wrote to a friend: 'The Orpheus and Erudicy - how is her name spelt? - are not in the act of parting. She is a ghost following him in a spring-lit landscape, watched by Hermes'.

Orpheus and Eurydice is an amalgamation of Ricketts's interests. He collected Greek pots, Tanagra figurines and classical sculpture. Before he painted the present work, he had published an essay on Greek dress in The Saturday Review in 1909, and designed several plays requiring Greek costume. In the early 1920s, contemporary to the present work, he painted the Trojan Women (Manchester City Art Gallery) and Diomed with the Horses of Achilles.

Sir Edmund Davis (1862-1939), the picture's first owner, was one of the major British collectors of his generation and an important patron of contemporary British Art. His collection included Rembrandt's Saskia at Her Toilet, three Canalettos and three Van Dycks; as well as works by Gainsborough, Velazquez, Hogarth, Reynolds, Millais, Rossetti, Watts, Whistler, Rodin and Corot.