(1866 - 1931)
Charles Ricketts studied illustration at the City and Guilds Technical Art School in London, after which in 1888, he established an artists’ colony near J. McNeill Whistler’s old house in Chelsea. He set up The Vale Press and published books including works by Oscar Wilde. He also produced designs and illustrations combining medieval, Renaissance, and modern styles. Ricketts worked as a theatre designer for productions including George Bernard Shaw’s ‘St Joan’ (1924). In 1922 he became an Associate of the Royal Academy, becoming a Royal Academician in 1928. He wrote books on Titian and the Prado Museum in Madrid and was a prolific collector of antiquities and art, many of which were bequeathed to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
