Sir John Patrick Richardson, KBE, FBA (6 February 1924 – 12 March 2019) was a British art historian and biographer of Pablo Picasso.
In 1973 he joined New York gallery M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., as vice president in charge of 19th- and 20th-century painting, and later became managing director of Artemis, a mutual fund specializing in works of art.
When he was thirteen he became a boarder at Stowe School, where he admired the architecture and landscape and was taught something about the work of Picasso and other innovative painters.
By 1939 and the outbreak of World War II, Richardson knew that he wanted to become an artist, and, a month short of seventeen, enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art (at that time evacuated to Oxford), where he became a friend of Geoffrey Bennison and James Bailey.
When he was called up for military service, he obtained a position in the Irish Guards, but almost immediately contracted rheumatic fever and was invalided out of the army.
[10] Richardson moved to Provence in the south of France in 1952, when Cooper acquired the Château de Castille in the vicinity of Avignon and transformed the run-down castle into a private museum of early Cubism.
[15] In 1973, he joined New York gallery M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., as Vice President in charge of 19th- and 20th-century painting, and later became Managing Director of Artemis, a mutual fund specializing in works of art.
Though the fourth volume fell behind schedule (it was to be published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2014), Richardson spoke of still progressing with it in a February 2016 interview with Alain Elkann.
Richardson was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to art.