Morgan O'Driscoll Irish & International Art Auction 21st October 2019

82 56 William John Leech RHA ROI (1881-1968) Home Practice: Michael O’Neill of the Dublin Chamber Orchestra c.1910 inscribed on the reverse, on the canvas edge “Home Practice, Michael O’Neill of the Dublin Chamber Orchestra” oil on canvas 61.5 x 51.5cm (24.25 x 20.25in) Provenance: Private Collection Literature: Denise Ferran’s 1997 PhD. thesis on William John Leech (TCD 9405, p.94), catalogued and illustrated. €20,000-30,000 (£17,699-26,548) This painting depicts the musician Michael O’Neill, playing the violincello in an informal setting. Although the room appears to be a drawing room, there are several paintings leaning against the wall, hinting that it may also have served as a studio. The door to the room is open, casting a shadow on the floor. Wearing round horn-rimmed spectacles, O’Neill is seated on a round-backed chair, playing a ‘cello. Dressed in a dark business suit, with white handkerchief in the breast pocket, and shirt and tie, he concentrates on the fingering, as he draws the bow across the strings. Behind him is a Rococo-style couch, upholstered in green silk. The walls of the room are grey-panelled, and this, and the style of the door, hints that this painting may have been done in France. Ferran dates the work to circa 1910, three years before Leech painted what is perhaps his best-known canvas, A Convent Garden, Brittany (NGI). On the reverse of the portrait is another painting, of trees in a park. Leech was evidently dissatisfied with this sketch, and, turning over the canvas, re-used it for the portrait of O’Neill. The sketch depicts mature trees, a red-brick wall and a large gate pier, the architectural style of which corroborates the idea that it was painted in France. While Leech’s paintings may lack the visual drama of works by John Lavery or John Singer Sargent, their quiet tonal harmonies, enlivened by an occasional use of bright colour, are evidence of an artist who painted with sincerity and feeling. In his portrait of O’Neill, Leech used a restrained palette of grey, brown and green tones. The composition of the painting is a study in angles, with the ‘cello at right angles to the bow, and the musician’s right arm. The floor is also depicted using diagonals, adding a sense of liveliness to the composition. Born in Dublin in 1881, Leech was educated privately, at St. Columba’s College, and also in Switzerland. In 1898 he returned to Ireland, to study at the Metropolitan School of Art, transferring not long afterwards to the Royal Hibernian Academy schools, where the teaching of Walter Osborne and Nathaniel Hone was an important influence. In 1901 he moved to Paris, enrolling at the Academie Julian. He remained in France for the next ten years, living in Paris and Brittany, and regularly sending his work to the RHA in Dublin. Often painted in the open air, his paintings were well-received, winning him the Taylor Prize four times. In 1907 he had an exhibition at Leinster Hall in Dublin, along with two fellow-students from the Academie Julien, Constance Gore-Booth and Casimir Dunin Markiewicz. Leech was elected a member of the RHA in 1910, the same year he and his parents moved to London. For the rest of his life, he lived either in England or on the Continent, but continued to show at the RHA. In 1912, the year of his marriage, Leech showed forty-one paintings of Venice and Switzerland, at the Goupil Gallery in London. In 1917 he was with fellow-artist Sydney Thompson in Marseille, and three years later was in North Africa. Although he established a good reputation early on in his career, Leech was not financially successful. In 1953, his first marriage having failed, he was married for a second time, to May Botterell, and set up a studio in Surrey. He died after falling from a railway bridge in Surrey in 1968. Peter Murray, September 2019

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