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William John Leech
RHA ROI (1881-1968)
PAINTING IN A GARDEN
oil on canvas
signed lower left; original
inscribed label on reverse
27 by 21in. (68.58 by
53.34cm)
Provenance:
Dawson Gallery, Dublin;
Private collection, Dublin;
Whyte’s, 16 September
2003, lot 87;
Private collection
Exhibited:
RHA, 1955, catalogue no. 85
(Where it was priced at
£219-0-0, making it the
most expensively priced
painting Leech ever
exhibited at the RHA, up
until his final year of
exhibiting there, in 1967)
Painting in a Garden is one of
a series of self portraits that
Leech painted from the
1920s until his death in 1968.
Inscribed in Leech’s
handwriting on the reverse
of this work is “No. 3 Painting
in a Garden, W. J. Leech 20
Abbey Road, London, NW8”.
This was the address of the
ffth foor apartment that his
future wife, Mrs May
Botterell, had rented in
Hampstead from 1938.
Leech based himself in the
apartment after his own
studio space at Steele’s
Studios was bombed in
1941. Even after Steele’s
Studio was partially patched
up, he remained at 20 Abbey
Road, until 1958 when he
and May moved to West
Clandon, outside Guildford
in Surrey. Painting in a
Garden was thus probably
painted during the 1940s
when Leech was in his
sixties. His annual extended
trips to France were no
longer possible and his subject matter focused on still-life, fower studies,
portraits of his family and friends and his self portraits, which were
painted outside in the sunlit garden of his studio.
In this portrait Leech’s personality is portrayed in his attention to detail in
his dress: his polished shoes, ironed trousers and white shirt – similar
clothes to those he is wearing in Self Portrait (Painting in a Garden)1.
However, in the present work, Leech has his shirt sleeves rolled up, he is
tieless and hatless and his gaze is focusing on the canvas instead of
looking out at his refection in the mirror. In most of his self portraits
Leech is formally dressed and in the series he painted in the last ten years
of his life he is wearing his overcoat over his open necked white shirt. This
work is similar in pose to his Self Portrait, painted in Steele’s Studios on the
back of the canvas, Flowers in a Vase, except for the fact that there Leech is
wearing a black jacket, a handkerchief in his top pocket, white shirt and
tie and holding additional paint brushes in his left hand. In Painting in a
Garden he adopts a happier, more relaxed pose as he leans towards his
canvas, his right arm extended and his left arm loosely dropped at his
side. He captures the sunlight on the grass in vivid greens and yellows
framed by the frieze of darker trees in the top one third of the picture. The
canvas deckchair, with stripes in Indian red, echoes the diagonal of
Leech’s body and is the same deckchair seen in Steps to the Studio,
painted outside his studio at Candy Cottage, West Clandon, Surrey, where
he spent the fnal ten years of his life.
1 Illustrated on page 235 of Denise Ferran, William John Leech: An Irish Painter Abroad,
National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 1996, pp.234-235.
Denise Ferran
€20,000-€30,000 (£16,393-£24,590 approx).