Later Victorian Portraits Catalogue
Charles de Sousy Ricketts (1866-1931), Painter, designer and art collector
- Gallery portraits
- All known portraits
- Biography and References
Artist, book and stage designer, and collector; born Geneva, 2 October 1866. Studied wood-engraving at City & Guilds Art School, Lambeth; lifelong partnership from 1882 with Charles Shannon, with whom he produced illustrated books, founded the Vale Press 1894–1900 and amassed a fine collection of antique and oriental objects and modern art; produced Symbolist-style paintings and small Rodinesque sculptures, followed by acclaimed stage set and costume designs 1906–28; died London, 7 October 1931.
A friend of Oscar Wilde, Lucien Pissarro, W.B. Yeats and G.B. Shaw, he has been called ‘the last of the aesthetes’ and ‘one of the last of the artist-scholars’. [1] His appearance and personality were equally striking. According to William Rothenstein, ‘Ricketts with his pale, delicate features, fair hair and pointed gold-red beard looked like a Clouet drawing. Half French, he had the quick mind and rapid speech of a southerner … he seemed to know everything, to have been everywhere.’ [2] According to Thomas Sturge Moore, his ‘thin, colourless face and long light hair [was] more like a dandelion puff than anything else. He was blithe, alert, active and an extremely fast talker.’ [3]
Dr Jan Marsh
A friend of Oscar Wilde, Lucien Pissarro, W.B. Yeats and G.B. Shaw, he has been called ‘the last of the aesthetes’ and ‘one of the last of the artist-scholars’. [1] His appearance and personality were equally striking. According to William Rothenstein, ‘Ricketts with his pale, delicate features, fair hair and pointed gold-red beard looked like a Clouet drawing. Half French, he had the quick mind and rapid speech of a southerner … he seemed to know everything, to have been everywhere.’ [2] According to Thomas Sturge Moore, his ‘thin, colourless face and long light hair [was] more like a dandelion puff than anything else. He was blithe, alert, active and an extremely fast talker.’ [3]
Dr Jan Marsh
Footnotesback to top
1) Sutton 1966, pp.147, 143.
2) Rothenstein 1931–2, vol.1, p.173.
3) Quoted in Rothenstein 1928, p.180.
Referencesback to top
Attwood 1984Attwood, P., ‘The Medals of Alphonse Legros’, The Medal, vol.5, 1984, pp.7–23.
Attwood 1992
Attwood, P., Artistic Circles: The Medal in Britain 1880–1918, exh. cat., British Museum, London, 1992.
Blanche 1937
Blanche, J.-E., Portraits of a Lifetime 1870–1914, London, 1937.
Calloway 1979
Calloway, S., Charles Ricketts, Subtle and Fantastic Decorator, London, 1979.
Calloway & Delaney 1979
Calloway, S., and P. Delaney, Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon: An Aesthetic Partnership, exh. cat., Orleans House, Twickenham, 1979.
Darracott 1980
Darracott, J., The World of Charles Ricketts, London, 1980.
Delaney 1978
Delaney, P., The Lithographs of Charles Shannon, London, 1978.
Delaney 1990
Delaney, J.G.P., Charles Ricketts: A Biography, Oxford, 1990.
Delaney 2004
Delaney, J.G.P, ‘Ricketts, Charles de Sousy (1866–1931)’, ODNB, Oxford, 2004; online ed., January 2008.
Droth 2000
Droth, M., The Cult of the Statuette in Late Victorian Britain: from the collection of Leeds Museums and Galleries, Leeds, 2000.
Dulac 1983
Edmund Dulac: Illustrator and Designer, 1882–1953, exh. cat., Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield, City Museum and Art Gallery, Bristol and Geffrye Museum, London: Sheffield, 1983.
Engen 2007
Engen, R., The Age of Enchantment: Beardsley, Dulac and their Contemporaries 1890–1930, exh. cat., Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, 2007.
Evans 1928
Evans, P., Fifty Heads: Drawn by Powys Evans, London, 1928.
Hart-Davis 1972
Hart-Davis, R., A Catalogue of the Caricatures of Max Beerbohm, London, 1972.
Holmes 1936
Holmes, Sir C.J., Self and Partners (Mostly Self), London, 1936.
McKeown 2010
McKeown, W.C., ‘Charles Shannon in the House of Delia: A Theme from Tibullus’, Burlington Magazine, May 2010, pp.303–4.
Moore 1933
Moore, T.S., Charles Ricketts R.A.: Sixty-five Illustrations, London, 1933.
O’Donoghue 1908–22
O’Donoghue, F., Catalogue of Engraved British Portraits preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, 5 vols, London, 1908–22 (and vol.6, H.M. Hake, Supplement and indexes, 1925).
Ricketts 1939
Ricketts, C., Self-Portrait: Taken from the Letters and Journals of Charles Ricketts R.A., comp. T.S. Moore, ed. C. Lewis, London, 1939.
Rogers 1993
Rogers, M., Master Drawings from the National Portrait Gallery, London, touring exh. cat., NPG, London, 1993.
Rothenstein 1926
Rothenstein, J., The Portrait Drawings of William Rothenstein 1889–1925, London, 1926.
Rothenstein 1928
Rothenstein, J., The Artists of the 1890s, London, 1928.
Rothenstein 1898a
Rothenstein, W., English Portraits, London, 1898.
Rothenstein 1931–2
Rothenstein, W., Men and Memories: Recollections of William Rothenstein, 2 vols, London, 1931–2.
Rouen 1997
Jacques-Emile Blanche, peintre, exh. cat., Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, 1997.
Sato, Lambourne & Holland 2000
Sato, T., L. Lambourne, M. Holland and others, The Wilde Years: Oscar Wilde and the Art of His Time, exh. cat., Barbican Art Gallery, London, 2000.
Speight 1962
Speight, R., William Rothenstein: The Portrait of an Artist in His Time, London, 1962.
Stetz 2007
Stetz, M.D., Facing the Late Victorians: Portraits of Writers and Artists from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, Newark, DE, 2007.
Sutton 1966
Sutton, D., ‘A Neglected Virtuoso: Charles Ricketts and his Achievement’, Apollo, February 1966, pp.138–47.