European Years

Richardson made a full commitment to art at the age of 27 upon the death of his parents and sailed to Europe in December 1886 to study at the Academie Julien. He spent the next fourteen years exploring and painting scenes of France, Holland, Spain, and North Africa. As many artists did he returned to the United States periodically to sell and display his work. He entered the annual French Salon competition in 1889-1890 and in 1894-1900 with portraits, genre paintings and landscapes. Most of his works were in oil, but he submitted at least two pastels.

Influenced by Rembrandt and Velázquez, Richardson copied several figures from their paintings while visiting Madrid with Colin Campbell Cooper in 1890-91. On this same trip he traveled to North Africa which inspired his sunny paintings of street scenes in Tunisia and Algeria.

In 1890 he created perhaps his masterpiece–a portrait of an old woman at prayer. The Widow, exhibited at the 1890 Salon. This painting later traveled to many American cities and was featured at the Detroit Institute of Art. The Detroit News Tribune captions a photograph of the painting with “A striking work of art … The somber surroundings, the supplicating attitude, the intense expression upon the face … all join to make the most realistic representation of the artist’s theme; while the coloring, true to the tints of life, comes out against the dark background with a vividness almost startling.” The Bathers from the 1894 Salon was listed as “The most important nude of the 1900 Philadelphia Academy exhibit. “The drawing of the figures…is expressly beautiful.”

After his marriage to Frances Hill in 1894 and return to Paris, his summers were spent in Etaples, a small French fishing village near Holland. The local peasants and fisher folk were subjects of many of his paintings during this period. Large canvases depicting farmers plowing, women at work in the fields or at home, and the Arrival of Fishing Boats were entered into the Salon. One of these, A Summer Evening, Etaples, won an Honorable Mention at the 1899 Salon. During the years in Europe Richardson painted many portraits of his wife–one in a white dress seated in a garden, another in a sealskin jacket. In 1897, he completed a pastel portrait of his first child Eleonore. Later in Ipswich he completed an oil of his son Jerome.