Formal Garden Number Three

John Edwards Richard

Very little information is readily found on the California printmaker John “Jack” Edwards Richard. A Bay Area artist, he received his MFA from the California College of the Arts, then known as the California College of Arts and Crafts. It is known, however, that he often depicted landscapes and gardens, as with this view of the botanical gardens located in the Strawberry Canyon campus of the University of California, Berkeley.

Richard’s early style, as seen in “UC Botanical Gardens,” is reminiscent of French post-Impressionist printmakers such as Jules Pascin and Edouard Vuillard, in which broad views of landscapes and cityscapes are delicately laced together with fine linework. Beyond the cultivated gardens at their feet rise the Berkeley/Oakland hills, rolling gently upward.