Fred Richards - Etchings, drawings, watercolours and oil paintings
Frederick Charles Richards (1878-1932)
His parents died when he was about eighteen years old. Encouraged by friends of his parents with whom he was lodging he enrolled as a student at the Newport School of Art. In 1909 he won the first Newport Art Scholarship to attend the Royal College of Art in London.
Extremely popular with fellow students he attended artist colonies in London, Paris, Cornwall and Belgium.
He is best known for his prolific output of architectural drawings and etchings which he made of scenes in London, France, Belgium, Italy and Persia during the 1910s and 1920s. However it should not be forgotten that he was also an influential teacher, lecturer, and writer.
During his lifetime he constant contact with Newport and was greatly missed as a person as well as an artist after his death at the relatively early age of 54.
As a tribute his work was on constant display during the 1940s and 1950s in the Museum and Art Gallery in Dock Street.
"I thank you for having accepted my gifts and for having hung them. I hope they will call your attention to beautiful towns, and so awaken such appreciation of beauty that if you remember some spots in Newport more beautiful than the rest you will preserve them, and if there are other aspects not so beautiful you will improve them" (F. C Richards upon the presentation of a collection of etchings and drawings to the Newport Museum & Art Gallery, 1923).
