Richard Eurich, a painter of landscapes and marine scenes, was born in Bradford where he also began his professional artistic training, at Bradford School of Arts and Crafts. He enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art in 1924, studying under Henry Tonks. He left the Slade three years later and was given a solo exhibition in the Goupil Gallery in 1929. Having decided to paint the sea, he spent the a year working on the Dorset coast where he developed his own lyrical style. He showcased his paintings of coastal scenes and harbours from this period at the Redfern Gallery in 1933, where he was to exhibit another fifteen times throughout his life. He married Mavis Llewellyn Pope, the daughter of an art lecturer, the following year and together they moved to Hampshire where they lived until his death.

Eurich first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1937 and then worked as an official war artist during the Second World War, appointed to the Admiralty from 1941 to 1945 and his output from this period won him much critical acclaim. During that time he was also elected an associate of the Royal Academy, eventually becoming a Royal Academician in 1953. He taught at Camberwell School of Art from 1949 until 1967 and, in 1968, he had the first of three solo exhibitions at Tooth’s Gallery. Following this, he started to experience a revival of critical interest leading to regular solo exhibitions at the Fine Art Society and a major retrospective exhibition at Bradford Art Gallery in 1980. He was appointed OBE four years later and he was awarded an honorary DLitt from Bradford University in 1989. He had a final exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in 1991, a year before his death.

Eurich is regarded as one of Britain’s leading figurative artists. He is represented in various collections, namely the Tate, the National Maritime Museum and the Imperial War Museum.