Diary extracts for January 1927 to May 1928

1927:

During these months I had produced quite a number of paintings and it was decided that I should go back to London to try my luck.

I found myself in a kind of storeroom with a skylight. The room was so high that it was pointed out to me that if I could only turn it on one side it would be quite a nice place. It was dark and dirty and infested with mice.

Here I painted two or three quite large canvases and I carried them round to dealers and exhibitions without success.

[unknown date]:

I had now moved to a basement flat in Redcliffe Gardens. It was rather dark but spacious. My few pieces of furniture were quite lost in the great kitchen with its six-foot stone sink. The dark coal cellar and wine cellar and the iron bars outside the windows gave it a dungeon-like atmosphere.

1928:

Richard did not have his paints with him when he went home for Christmas 1927, so he worked on some drawings over the holiday period and into the new year. 

1928:

Richard had a friend in the Treasury who said he should meet a Mr Stocks, also in the Treasury. Apparently he had two Duncan Grant paintings in his office!

Stocks visited Richard’s basement flat to look at his work and suggested that Eddie Marsh should see his drawings and paintings too. Edward Marsh was well known as a patron to the arts in addition to being with the Treasury and Private Secretary to Winston Churchill who was Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time.

Eddie Marsh duly arrived

with kid gloves on and top hat etc, colliding with dustbins and wiping off cobwebs. He seemed a bit disappointed but bought a small painting for £5 ['The Broken Tree' (1926)]

1928:

A few days after visiting Richard, Marsh wrote to him and said he had seen some of his drawings in the St George’s Gallery in Hanover Square which he thought were far ahead of what he’d seen in his studio. He had bought 'The Bedroom' and another connoisseur, A E Anderson, had purchased 'Resting'.

Of 'Bedroom Interior' Marsh wrote to Richard:

It is very delightful and has the added charm of colour. I snatched it away from an old gentleman who asked for it a minute after I had told Howell [the gallery owner] I would have it! I only hope he will have bought another instead.

I should like to tell you how much I enjoyed your drawings - an achievment.