John Patrick Richardson was born in London, England on February 6, 1924. He was attending the Slade School of Fine Art in London when World War II broke out. He was drafted into the British Army but was discharged after catching rheumatic fever. During the war, he worked as an industrial designer by day and an air-raid warden and firefighter at night. After the war, he wrote for The New Statesman and other publications, sometimes using the pseudonym Richard Johnson.
He became an art historian and curator. At various time during his life, he was an artist, a dealer, an auction-house executive, and an author. In the early 1960s, Christie's, hired him to open a New York office. He left Christie's in 1973 to work for the Knoedler Gallery, where he was put in charge of 19th- and 20th-century painting. He was later named managing director of Artemis, an art investment fund. By the 1980s, he wrote for several publications including Vanity Fair and The New York Review of Books. He wrote numerous books including The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Picasso, Provence, and Douglas Cooper; Sacred Monsters, Sacred Masters; and a four-volume biography of Pablo Picasso. The first volume won the Whitbread Award. He organized several art exhibitions featuring Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. In 2012, he knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. He died on March 12, 2019 at the age of 95.
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