WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART MONDAY 26 May 2025 FROM 6PM

46 26 William John Leech RHA ROI (1881-1968) GARDENERS JOY oil on canvas signed lower left; inscribed and with Dawson Gallery label on reverse 24 by 18in. (61 by 45.7cm) Frame Size: 30 by 24 (76.2 by 61cm) Provenance: Dawson Gallery, Dublin; Private collection; Thence by descent to the present owners William John Leech was educated at St. Columba’s College, Dublin, and in Switzerland. He subsequently attended the Metropolitan School of Art before passing to the Royal Hibernian Academy School as a pupil of Walter Frederick Osborne (1859-1903), and from there to the Academie Julian in Paris in 1901. In the 1930s Leech embarked on a series of pictures of various themes; still lifes, self portraits, railways, and his life long friend and partner May Botterell, who he married in 1953. From the 1930s Leech painted daily at his rented No. 4 Steele studio, and his greatest influence during this time were the ‘’Bloomsbury ‘’ painters - Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and Roger Fry. Their focus was more with private than public concerns and influenced Leech to paint purely for ‘art’s sake’. In ‘’Gardener’s Joy’’ Leech chooses a simple subject, and investigates how light at a particular time of day affects it. Leech painted a number of similar still life studies, ‘’Chrysanthemums’’ (AIB Collection), ‘’Flowers in a Mirror’’ (Private Collection), and ‘’Flowers in a Vase ‘’ (Private Collection). All are painted with masterly fashion from unusual perspectives, the flower studies are viewed from above or on a diagonal axis. In this painting, Leech has applied this technique, and has gone one step further by directing the viewer’s eye to the garden bathed in sunlight, and to something personal, his garden shed. Leech’s talents lay at depicting flowers in early morning, at the first flicker of the sun’s ray, in bright light, or in the eerie light of the moon to the early dawn light. €15,000-€20,000 (£12,710-£16,950 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot26