Music and poetry were abiding influences for Richards' art. He claimed in 1960 that, "all artists - poets, musician, painters - are creating in their own idioms metaphors for the nature of existence, for the secrets of their time." From 1957 to 1962 Richards was preoccupied with a series of semi-abstract seascapes that were inspired by Claude Debussy's prelude 'La Cathédrale Engloutie', an evocation of the legend of the submerged cathedral at Ys on the coast of Brittany, which was said to rise from the depths of the sea at moments of profound calm with its bells ringing through the water. The music reminded him of the coast of Gower in Wales, where he had spent his youth, and he related the idea of the natural world reclaiming a monumental human edifice to the marine depths to the notion of the 'cycle of nature'.