Albert Richards (19 December 1919 – 5 March 1945) was a British war artist. Born in 1919 to a World War I veteran, he enlisted as a sapper in 1940. He later served in the British Army during World War II, both as a paratrooper and as a war artist. He was the youngest of the three

British official war artists British official war artists were a select group of artists who were employed on contract, or commission (art), commissioned to produce specific works during the First World War, the Second World War and select military actions in the post-war per ...

killed during the conflict.

Early life

Richards was born in Liverpool, the son of Hannah Beatty and George Richards, a World War I veteran and wood machinist. After attending the

Wallasey Wallasey () is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, in Merseyside, England; until 1974, it was part of the historic county of Cheshire. It is situated at the mouth of the River Mersey, at the north-eastern corner of the Wirral Pe ...

School of Art and Crafts, Albert Richards studied at the Royal College of Art for three months before being conscripted into the Army in 1940. He enlisted as a sapper in 286 Field Company,

Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is a corps of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces and is heade ...

and was promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal. He served as a sapper from April 1940 until the middle of 1943. During that period he was assigned to duties such as building barrack huts and defence works throughout England and he frequently painted scenes showing these tasks. He submitted several of these paintings to the War Artists' Advisory Committee, which, impressed with their freshness and quality, began in May 1941, to purchase his artwork.

1943–45

In 1943, Richards volunteered for parachute duties and he underwent training at the No.1 Parachute Training School at RAF Ringway, near Manchester, He depicted this training in several paintings such as ''Kilkenny's Circus'' and ''Parachute Training over Tatton Park''. In September 1943 Richards was offered a three-month contract by WAAC but declined to accept due to his other commitments; in December 1943 he accepted his first six-month WAAC commission. In March 1944, he was granted an honorary commission with the rank of

Captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...

. Later in the month Richards took part in a large scale parachute drop over Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, an event he recalled in the painting ''The Drop''. This was in fact a practice exercise for

D-Day The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on Tuesday, 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D ...

. Richards took part in a second such event, Operation Mush, over five days in April across Gloucestershire. On

, Richards landed in France by parachute with the

6th Airborne Division The 6th Airborne Division was an airborne infantry division of the British Army during the Second World War. Despite its name, the 6th was actually the second of two airborne divisions raised by the British Army during the war, the other being t ...

and took part in the attack on the Merville Battery and the capture of Le Plein village. Richards depicted the attack on the gun battery in several paintings composed within a few weeks of D-Day. After Le Plein had been secured, Richards continued with the advancing Allied forces through France and, after a brief period of leave in England, on into the Low Countries. In France he painted scenes such as the remains of the gliders used in the attack on Pegasus Bridge at Ranville, destroyed bridges and roadside camouflage screens. In January 1945, he recorded the funerals held for the victims of the massacre at Bande in Belgium. One of Richards last pictures, painted in February 1945, shows the bridge at

Gennep Gennep () is a municipality and a city in upper southeastern Netherlands. It lies in the very northern part of the province of Limburg, 18 km south of Nijmegen. Furthermore, it lies on the right bank of the Meuse river, and south of the forest o ...

built by Allied sappers across the flooded River Maas. It was in this area that Richards was killed on 5March 1945 when his jeep drove over a landmine. He is buried at Milsbeek War Cemetery, near Gennep.

Legacy

As well as the Tate and the

Imperial War Museum Imperial War Museums (IWM) is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, the museum was intended to record the civil and military ...

, Richards' pictures are represented in the collections of the Walker Art Gallery, the National Maritime Museum, and the

Williamson Art Gallery The Williamson Art Gallery and Museum is an art gallery and museum situated in Birkenhead, Merseyside, England and houses Wirral's art collection. History The art gallery and museum opened on 1 December 1928, the single-storey building is Neo-G ...

Early life

1943–45

Legacy

References

Further reading