Richard Maury, "Self-Portrait," 2008, oil on canvas laid down on panel, 23 3/4 x 20 1/4 inches
“I have many colleagues who paint imagined scenes, but I am interested artistically only in here and now. The fact that I live in this out-of-the-ordinary house in this out-of-the-ordinary town, I am sure obscures the present-day reality which is my aim in my work. I would like to feel that this quotidian and thus, I hope, eternal quality can easily be perceived.”
_Richard Maury
“Uncertain as to their meanings, we can be assured that both artist and paintings are sealed as visual letters with “no return” postage. At his bare essence, and perhaps his most inscrutable self, he reduces the noble tradition of figurative and representational art to a visible sound produced not by paintbrush but from the bow of his violin. It is a barely audible, lingering chord – of places, persons and objects once seen but now only surviving in his pictorial imagination.
Richard Maury’s life and art return us to [a] magical realm.”
_Philip Eliasoph, "Letter from Florence: The Art of Richard Maury," American Arts Quarterly, Winter 1997
Richard Maury was born in Washington, D.C. in 1935 and attended school locally at the University of Maryland College Park (1954-55), Corcoran Gallery School (1955-56), and Montgomery Park College (1956-57), before moving to New York to continue studies at the Art Students League (1956-59). Soon thereafter, he traveled to Italy to attend L’Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence (1960-65), and then settled in the ancient city, where he lived and worked for six decades until his passing in 2020.
Paintings by Richard Maury are intimate portrayals of his home and family bathed in a natural light. Maury’s breathtaking figurative and still life paintings brought him widespread acclaim both in the United States and abroad and are as coveted now as they were throughout his lifetime.
In 2007, Richard Maury was awarded the J. Sanford Saltus Award & Medal from the National Academy, New York, NY. Having numerous solo-exhibitions in New York, Washington, London and Italy during his lifetime, Maury is also represented in many public collections including the Arnot Museum (Elmira, NY), Arts Students League (New York, NY), Fogg Museum (Cambridge, MA), Flint Museum of Art (Detroit, MI), Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY), New Britain Museum of Art (CT), and Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.