Charles de Sousy Ricketts

b. Geneva 1866 - d. London 1931

BiographyBorn in Geneva in 1866, the son of an English father and French mother, Charles de Sousy Ricketts studied at the City and Guilds Art School in London. There, aged just sixteen, Ricketts met his lifelong companion Charles Shannon. With Shannon, Ricketts founded the art journal The Dial, and The Vale a publishing house which produced over seventy publications. An accomplished printmaker, painter, jewellery designer and theatre production designer, Ricketts, with Shannon also amassed an impressive collection of art which was subsequently donated to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. A friend of the artists Edmund Dulac and William Rothenstein, and the writer Oscar Wilde, Ricketts was also admired as an art critic and historian.
Jessica O'Donnell