Improvisation No.9, Upon the Dawn - Preparatory Drawing

Ceri Richards was born in 1903 near Swansea to a Welsh-speaking family where music and poetry (influences on his work) were positively encouraged. A gifted draughtsman at school, he left to be apprentice in a firm of electricians in Swansea, devoting his evenings to studying engineering draughtsmanship at Swansea College of Technology and drawing at the Swansea College of Art.

He was a versatile artist, able to absorb many influences without sacrificing his originality. From 1933 he worked on a series of relief constructions and assemblages which were described by John Rothenstein as ‘original creations of a rare order, and unlike anything else done in Britain at the time’. Much of his work was inspired by his love of music and the poetry of Dylan Thomas. Richards died in 1971.