Nothing Wasted: The Paintings of Richard Harrison

At a time when figurative painting has long been out of fashion in British art schools and among the curators of the nation’s galleries of modern art, its acknowledgement limited to Freud, Hockney and a handful of other grandees, Richard Harrison has been one of the very few younger contemporary artists to hold to this ancestral tradition.

His early work was essentially abstract, and abstract values have formed the armature of all of his later work, but in subject he has moved from a convincing interest in the texture and manipulable qualities of the simple materials of a
painting to biblical and mythical narratives that were common among European painters from the High Renaissance to the High Olympus of Victorian art. In becoming a history painter, however, he has abandoned nothing of his interest in canvas, the importance of its warp and weft, or in the qualities of the best hand-ground oil paints, their rich colour, translucence, and reflective and refractive characteristics.

As a student at Chelsea School of Art, Harrison was noticed in 1987 by the critic Brian Sewell, then searching on behalf of the Mail on Sunday for young painters who, unconcerned with minimalism and conceptualism, were still connected to the ancient ancestry of art and skill, and of substantial quality and broad appeal; they have remained in contact ever since. This affectionate but dispassionate and critical book – part analysis of Harrison’s unconventional work, part account
of a tumultuous and often alarming life – is the most comprehensive record of his intellectual and aesthetic development to date. Generously illustrated with numerous reproductions of his work, the book also represents the most comprehensive collection of his work in any one place.

Brian Sewell has since 1984 been the art critic of the London Evening Standard and one of its political columnists, winning national and international press awards in both spheres. A graduate of the Courtauld Institute, he has written exhibition catalogues for the Royal Academy, the British Council and the Council of Europe; contributed to the catalogues of the Royal Collection; worked for a decade at Christie’s, the international art auctioneers, as an expert on old masters; and been a consultant to museums and galleries in the USA, Germany, Switzerland and South Africa. He contributes to magazines and broadcasts on radio and television.