Obituary: Richard Eurich

FURTHER to the touching obituary you published of Richard Eurich (by Peyton Skipwith, 10 June), may I add a reminder of his sensitivity as a teacher? writes David Hepher.

He was a visiting teacher at Camberwell when I was there in the late Fifties and it was the custom at that time to put up exhibitions of student work done over the summer holidays at the beginning of the autumn term, for criticism and prizes. I remember putting in three pictures, two fairly conventional landscapes done in France and one more experimental painting of a landscape in Sheffield which owed not a little to Mondrian. I got a severe hammering by the senior tutor for the more adventurous picture, but was awarded a prize for the landscapes. Afterwards Richard took me on one side and said how important it was to experiment and how he wholly supported me in this; here I felt was a painter talking and not an academic - particularly moving in that he was of the most radical of artists himself.

In view of the outrageous cuts in visiting teaching to art schools over the last 10 years it seems a pertinent time to mention this and I am sure Richard Eurich would be, is, in full agreement.