Maurice de Sausmarez, ‘Self Portrait’
SUSAN RYDER RP: MY TEACHER
My art has been influenced by many teachers, who I might prefer to call Masters, but the one who taught me the most was Maurice De Sausmarez. He became Principal of the Byam Shaw in 1962, just a year after I had started there.
I remember him coming down to the Thames at Chelsea Reach where I was alone painting barges. I remember him too, being utterly shocked when a fellow student and I returned from painting on Hampstead Heath, explaining we had had to stop because a man was exposing himself. We had just thought it odd! But mostly I remember the most important week of lessons I was ever given. Maurice was teaching us to look.
About 15 of us entered the Life Room to find the centre of the studio piled up with upside down chairs and Donkeys ( a sort of stool -cum-easel ).
We spent the first day trying to draw it. Day two, from the same position, we were told to draw no lines, just shading shapes and blocks of tone. Day three again from the same view, only lines, drawing the negative shapes. Finally on day four, we swapped positions and were allowed to draw this massive complicated subject in a way that suited us best.
I had learned how to look.
Very sadly Maurice died in 1969, aged just 54, before his ARA could become RA.”
Maurice de Sausmarez, ‘ Faceted Still Life’, 1961/2
