Miles Richmond
Miles Richmond In the mid-1990s Miles Richmond travelled by camper van throughout North Yorkshire, painting views of Richmond outdoors and in all weathers. Were it not for his remarkable physical stamina, he might have followed in the unfortunate footsteps of his hero Paul Cézanne.2 But Richmond was determined to keep painting until he achieved a view of this valley town that expressed his unique approach to the landscape: one that ‘collapses perspective and intermingles foreground and background’3 by both seeing through and capturing the veil of natural phenomena. It’s an interesting part of England, because this part of Yorkshire is divided… One of the first things William the Conqueror did was build a series of castles… [Richmond] castle sticks up like a sore thumb in the middle of this rather peaceful landscape… it goes on puzzling me, how exactly this castle hangs to that rock… It’s a mystery, but it’s only another example of the mystery of how anything appears. We think oh, the material world is a solid fact, but [it] is just the solid rigidity of our own heads.4
By 1954 however, Bomberg was actually in Spain. The departure of his Borough students, and the appointment of a new director at the Slade had finished his teaching hopes in London. He had even considered moving to the United States, but his Communist past made this impossible. While he disliked going to the same place twice (he first came to Ronda in the early 1930s), his wife Lilian wanted to live in Ronda, because its beauty, climate, and relative affordability made it an ideal place where they might finally enjoy retirement. Bomberg agreed, but he had quite different plans: he wanted to open an art school with his former Borough students, and he specifically wanted Richmond to assist him. When Bomberg found out that Richmond and Susanna were in southern Spain, he set out to find them, eventually locating them in Nerja.
Susanna’s mother, Elsa Richmond, Georgina, Susanna (with James), and Richmond, Ronda, 1959
Bomberg persuaded us to move to Ronda, he thought it was a more inspiring place, he thought I could do better close to him…So I joined Bomberg briefly, but then Susanna was pregnant, I returned to the south coast and our first child was born in Málaga and shortly afterwards… we moved up to Ronda and Bomberg found us a house next to his… it was pretty primitive, just one room… no water, no light, no toilet. It was just a room with a view.67
The Tajo, Ronda We bought mats and covered the holes in the floor… and there was a well or a spring where we got water… We brought up a small child there… Georgina… Bomberg came to her first birthday party… I saw him pretty well every day and certainly spent hours talking with him.68
9. Ronda from the Moorish
Baths, Evening, 1959 oil on canvas 65 x 75 cms 25 5⁄8 x 29 1⁄2 ins
17. Rocks near Montejaque I, 1964 oil on canvas 62 x 76 cms 24 3⁄8 x 297⁄8 ins
38. Ronda from Below, 1977 watercolour 70 x 100 cms 27 1⁄2 x 39 3⁄8 ins