Richard Eurich (1903-1992) lived through virtually the whole of the Twentieth Century and was touched by almost all of its schools and movements and influenced many of its more well-known practitioners.
That his work is hard to categorise is a function of that and he moves readily and smoothly between conventional landscapes to sometimes fantastic scenes with altered and observational perspectives and to figurative work where detailed study of faces, expressions and interactions reaps considerable rewards.
Analytical biographies of all of the century’s best known names have now appeared and we are, indeed, moving into the “important reappraisal” phase of those. To find original material and break new ground, writers are therefore progressing to more peripheral figures and, while it would be unfair to describe these as “minor”, they are certainly less well-known outside specialist circles. The reverse of that coin, of course, is that what deserve to be major figures are being rescued from at least relative obscurity, while blanks in the wider narrative are filled in.
So it is with Richard Eurich, as it says here, “a private man, not given much to self-promotion”. Eurich was many things (as were his contemporaries, of course) – an excellent draughtsman, teacher, painter of marine subjects and, inevitably for that generation, war artist.
Being the first full study, this was always going to be ground-breaking, but Andrew Lambirth’s typically thorough and sympathetic approach ensures a work that does its subject full justice and produces a nice balance between Eurich’s personal and professional lives.
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