Introduction

As a child, Richard Murry was always known by his first name, Arthur, and did not adopt the name Richard until he was in his teens. He was born in 1902, thirteen years after his older brother, JMM. Their parents lived in South London in what JMM described as a stiflingly respectable middle-class home. One of Richard’s most famous paintings depicts the Victorian parlour with flowers on the table, the crowded overmantel, their mother lifting her eyes from a book to gaze into the artist’s eyes, while their father, in shirt sleeves and braces, smokes a pipe and reads a broadsheet newspaper beside the fire. But the real domestic situation belied the comfortable normality of the portrait. Mr Murry, Snr, a clerk at Somerset House, was ten years older than his wife, ‘obstinate, short in his temper and short in his views’, and could, occasionally, be violent. They were all afraid of him.

JMM, in his autobiography, Between Two Worlds, described how, being at boarding school and having no friends at home during the school holidays, he devoted his time to his sibling, taking Richard out for walks in his pram, blackberrying in the park in summer and even writing stories for him. When he was at home, Richard would sit in JMM’s study to watch him at work. They had a very close bond.

Nine-year-old Richard, still then known as Arthur, first met KM when JMM brought her to his parent’s house in Nicosia Road, Wandsworth, to introduce her to their mother and father. JMM, only twenty-one, had created a scandal by living with KM, who was still married to George Bowden. Richard remembered a ‘curtain of ice’ and an atmosphere so hostile that he was afraid, though he did not understand why at the time. He did not see either KM or JMM for a further three years.

The relationship with the Murrys improved, after they were led to believe that JMM had married KM, and contact between Richard and his brother resumed. Richard was artistic and, like JMM, unwilling to follow the career path his father wanted him to take. But KM and JMM, impressed by his talent, encouraged him to realise his ambition and helped to persuade his parents that they should not stand in his way, though they were not prepared to support him financially. Richard was drawn towards illustrative art, etching and printing.