1913 Pencil on thin cream F.J.Head sketchbook paper
252 x 190 mm. Purchase: Peter Jones, Bury St Edmunds 2005 Funding support: MLA / V & A
Drawing for the etching 'Vire, Place de l'hotel de Ville'. After receiving his Diploma at the Royal College, Richards went on a tour from Honfleur to Vire in Normandy making drawings which he later made into etchings. The statue could be of the French mathematician Louis Bertrand Castel (1688-1757). Vire was heavily bombed in 1944 and was thereafter nearly entirely rebuilt. However, a few architectural features remain including the clocktower built over a 13th century gateway and the Eglise Notre Dame from the same period. For other views of Vire by Richards see WD1012, WD1011 and PR1605
Sketch of a street scene in Vire, Normandy; foreground, a square with pedestrians including a group of four men conversing and a woman holding a basket and an umbrella?; middleground, carts, figures, a bollard, a statue on a plinth and five storey houses / shops with canopies, shuttered windows, signboards, drainpipes, a lamp, chimney stacks and dormer windows; background, an old tower with conical tiled roof. Text on image 'M LECLERC SAGE FEMME', 'CASTEL', 'H.SOINARO' and 'CAUD'. Some stains upper left corner and lower margin. Crease lower left corner. Paper has perforated margin on the left