Jocelyn Rickards

Jocelyn Rickards (29 July 1924 – 7 July 2005) was an Australian artist and costume designer.

She was born in Melbourne in 1924, and moved to London as a young woman.^[1] During the 1940s to 1950s, she was one of the Merioola Group of artists. The review of her works in a 1948 exhibition by Paul Haefliger was the source of the coined phrase "The Charm School" to describe these Sydney artists.^[2][3]

In 1966 Rickards won a BAFTA Film Award for the film Mademoiselle.^[1]

In 1967 she was nominated at the 39th Academy Awards in the category of Best Costumes-Black and White for her work on the film Morgan – A Suitable Case for Treatment.^[4] Poor health led to an early end to her career as a designer, but she later taught costume design at the University of Southern California.^[1]

Rickards was married to Leonard Rosoman from 1963 until divorcing in 1970; the following year, she married Clive Donner.^[1] Her autobiography The Painted Banquet: My Life and Loves, was published in 1987 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, and was praised thus by Graham Greene (a former lover of hers): "An outstanding capacity for friendship - rare in the jealous world of art and letters to which she belongs - makes Jocelyn Rickard's autobiography unusually appealing".

Rickards died from pneumonia at a care home in Virginia Water, Surrey, on 7 July 2005, at the age of 80.^[1]