Richard Eurich R.A. 1903-1992

Acquired directly from the Artist by the family of the present owner

Dated to 1948, the present work belongs to a group of paintings whose themes of unreal fantasy reappear through the following decade. Exuding the slightly macabre air of the best children’s stories, this group of paintings, which include Battle of the Boggarts (Private Collection) and The Mummers (Nottingham Castle Museum), almost all have a night-time setting in which the semi-grotesque figures cavort, demonstrating a clear debt to Breughel and his followers. The Guy shows a company of masked revellers dancing around the flaring bonfire on which the guy of the title burns, whilst other characters look on. The setting for this surreal scene is a terraced street in an industrial town and, like other paintings of the group, may hark back to Eurich’s own memories of his childhood in Bradford in combination with his own children’s fascination with the stories of Wurzel Gummidge, then being widely broadcast on the radio.

The Guy appears to be the source for Eurich’s 1958 interpretation of the same subject, which under the same title is now in the collection of the London Borough of Southwark.