John Richardson

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Sir John Patrick Richardson, (6 February 1924-to-date), was a British art historian and biographer of Pablo Picasso.

Richardson has also worked as an industrial designer and as a writer for The New Observer.

He moved to Provence in 1952, where he became acquainted with Picasso, Fernand Léger, and Nicolas de Stal.

He went to New York in 1960 and curated a nine-gallery Picasso retrospective.

Christie's son was then selected to open their new US office, which he did for the next nine years.

He started as vice president in charge of 19th and 20th-century painting and later became the managing director of Artemis, a nonprofit fund specializing in works of art. In 1980, he began devoting all his time to writing and researching on his Picasso biography.

He was also a contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair.

Richardson was elected to the British Academy in 1993, and he was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford in 1995.

Richardson was named Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2011 after he was awarded Ordre des Lettres in France.

Youth and education

John Patrick Richardson was born in London on February 6th, the elder son of Sir Wodehouse Richardson, Quarter-Master General in the Boer War and founder of the Army & Navy Stores. Patty (née Crocker) was his mother; he had a younger sister (b.). (1925) and his younger brother. His father died when he was five years old, and his mother sent him to board at two separate preparatory schools, where he was unhappy. When he was thirteen, he became a boarder at Stowe School, where he adored the architecture and landscape and was taught a little about Picasso and other modern painters.

Richardson knew he wanted to be a painter by 1939, when he first arrived in Oxford, where he became a mentor of Geoffrey Bennison and James Bailey. When he was called up for military service, he earned a post in the Irish Guards but was soon diagnosed with rheumatic fever and was barred from serving in the army. He knew and made friends with Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, both of whom later created portraits of him. He and his mother and siblings were in London for the remainder of the war. He began working as an industrial designer before becoming a New Observer reviewer during daytime. Douglas Cooper, an art historian and collector, met with whom he would continue his life for the next ten years in 1949.

Richardson moved to Provence, France, in 1952, when Cooper bought the Château de Castille in Avignon's vicinity and turned the run-down castle into a private museum of early Cubism. Cooper had been involved in the Paris art scene before World War II and had been involved in the industry as well; besides constructing his own collection, he met many artists personally and introduced them to their friend. Richardson became a close friend of Picasso, Léger, and de Stal as well. He became involved in Picasso's portraits and considered publishing a book during this period of his life; more than 20 years later, his goals evolved into his four-part Picasso biography A Life of Picasso, which was first published in 2022.

Richardson left Cooper and migrated to New York City, where he arranged a nine-gallery Picasso retrospective in 1962 and a Braque retrospective in 1964. Christie's, the auction house's, hired him to open their US office, which he did for nine years. He joined M. Knoedler & Co. Inc. in 1973 as Vice President in charge of 19th-century and 20th-century painting, then later became President Artemis, a nonprofit fund specializing in works of art.

Richardson devoted all his time to writing in 1980. He was besides focusing on his Picasso biography, he was a contributor to The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair. Richardson was elected to the British Academy in 1993 and he was named Slade Professor of Art at the University of Oxford in 1995.

The first of four planned volumes of Richardson's A Life of Picasso biography (originally intended to be published in a single volume) was published in 1991. This illustrated 25 years from his birth to 1906 and that he received the Whitbread Award. In November 1996, the second volume was published, covering 1907-1916 and 1916, which included Cubism's birth, as well as the first volume in 2007, which was dedicated to the period from 1932 to 1932, when Picasso reached his 50th birthday. Richardson was working on the fourth volume, which was intended to extend the 1930s to the liberation of Paris in 1944. Richardson talked of progressing with it in a February 2016 interview with Alain Elkann, despite that it fell behind schedule (it was supposed to be published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2014). Richardson later said that he was working "even weekends" on the project with three assistants who were assisting him with writing and analysis. He said he was "up to 1939" and that he wished to "get through the war." In November 2021, the fourth volume, which chronicled Picasso's life up to 1943, was eventually published in November 2021.

Richardson wrote The Sorcerer's Apprentice, a fifteen-years after Cooper's death. In 1999, Picasso, Provence, and Douglas Cooper, as well as a collection of essays published in 2001 (Sacred Monsters, Sacred Masters). In the Gagosian Gallery in New York City, he was curator of an exhibition of the late Picasso with title Mosqueteros. He curated another show in 2010: Picasso - The Mediterranean Years (1945-1962), which ran from 4 June to 28 August 2010. Richardson and Diana Widmaier Picasso co-curated another sizable Picasso exhibition, "Picasso and Marie-Thérèse L'amour fou," at the Gagosian gallery in New York City, for which Richardson also wrote a related book.

Richardson was also honoured with the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France in 2011 for his contribution to furthering the arts in France and around the world.

In the 2012 New Year Honours for services to art, Richardson was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE).

Richardson died in New York City on March 12, 2019, at the age of 95.

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