Dorset Landscape

This work was bought from Tooth's, shortly after it was painted, by one of Richard's patrons, Sydney Schiff, who said that he considered it the finest painting he had seen for 30 years.

In Eurich's letter to Schiff (10 January, 1938) he is unable to identify the painting's terrain: "I cannot say exactly where it is. My wife and I were lost on the road, somewhere between Wimbourne (sic) and Blandford. We found ourselves surrounded by lovely downs and those Roman and Prehistoric elements fairly common in Dorset. I remember having the same feeling about it all as A.E. Housman put it in his mystic 'Wenlock Edge'. I will try and find out where it was, it may have been nearer Dorchester, it has much of Maiden Castle in it but it was …

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In Eurich's letter to Schiff (10 January, 1938) he is unable to identify the painting's terrain: "I cannot say exactly where it is. My wife and I were lost on the road, somewhere between Wimbourne (sic) and Blandford. We found ourselves surrounded by lovely downs and those Roman and Prehistoric elements fairly common in Dorset. I remember having the same feeling about it all as A.E. Housman put it in his mystic 'Wenlock Edge'. I will try and find out where it was, it may have been nearer Dorchester, it has much of Maiden Castle in it but it was much further north."

Schiff replied: "This picture like almost all of your things gives me an impression of vitality, of the power to capture the significant and essential in an everyday scene without the intrusion of incongruous elements. In other words where you seem to me to differ from many if not most of the younger contemporary artists is in your complete unselfconsciousness. You let your subject express itself through your sensibility istead of imposing your consciousness on the subject."