La Cathédrale Engloutie

Ceri Richards (1903 - 1971)

Oil on canvas

1960

Share this:

© Estate of Ceri Richards. All rights reserved, DACS 2016

License this image

Start Zooming
  • About the work
    Location
    Country: France
    City: Paris
    Place: British Embassy

    This painting is one of a number of works by Ceri Richards based on the theme of Claude Debussy’s La cathédrale engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral) of 1910. Debussy’s prelude is based on the Breton legend of the submerged cathedral of Ys, said to rise up out of the waters with the priests chanting and the bells chiming. Just as Debussy interprets the legend through musical composition, Richards gives visual expression to Debussy’s score. For Richards, Debussy was a visual composer, he believed that Debussey’s, ‘sounds and structures were, derived from a visual sensibility’.


    In Richards’ painting, semi-abstract forms emerge from a sea of blue. Ambiguously, they could be read as generic architectural features, the Gothic masonry of the cathedral; or perhaps as parts of rusty metal machinery. Two fossil-like rose windows are suggested, along with fragmented fluted columns, which look like broken piano keys.


  • About the artist
    Born in Dunvant, a mining village near Swansea, Ceri Richards studied at Swansea School of Art. In the early 1920s, he attended the Royal College of Art where he later taught, in addition to teaching at the Slade and Chelsea School of Art. He often returned to the Gower Peninsula in Wales, which inspired his work. Richards became Head of Painting at Cardiff School of Art during the Second World War. In 1961 he won a gold medal at the National Eisteddfod and in 1962, won the Einaudi Painting Prize at the Venice Biennale. A versatile artist, he made prints, collages, reliefs, costume designs and paintings. He was a Tate Trustee from 1958 to 1965, and received a CBE in 1961. After Richards’ death, major exhibitions of his work were held in Cardiff, Chichester and London.
  • Explore
    Places
    Subjects
    abstract
    Materials & Techniques
    canvas, oil, oil painting
  • Details
    Artist
    Ceri Richards (1903 - 1971)
    Title
    La Cathédrale Engloutie
    Date
    1960
    Medium
    Oil on canvas
    Dimensions
    height: 26.00 cm, width: 36.00 cm
    Acquisition
    Purchased from Marlborough Fine Art, September 1964
    Inscription
    bl: Ceri Richards 1960
    GAC number
    6686