Umbers

Mr Umbers said retailers with strong and competent management teams will fare best through the pandemic and the resultant downturn, along with those well positioned to move their business online.

At the time, Mr Umbers rejected speculation he planned to resign.

Hounsell sacked his chief executive Richard Umbers last month and appointed himself executive chairman, putting the focus in the fight for Myer’s future squarely on his broad shoulders.

On his palette he would grind out a colour collection of neutral grays, umbers, ochre and earthen greens that looked like they were pulled from the very soil he painted.

The umbers were not widely used in Europe before the end of the fifteenth century; The Renaissance painter and writer Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) described them as being rather new in his time.