Beschreibung:

CHLOE ABBOTT, 1965 William John Leech RHA ROI (1881-1968)
Signature: signed lower right Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 61 by 51cm., 24 by 20in. Provenance: Commissioned by the sitter's father-in-law; Collection of Mrs. Chloe Abbott; Private Collection, Dublin Literature: Denise Ferran, William John Leech An Irish Painter Abroad, NGI, Dublin, 1996, p. 94, reproduced fig. 59 Leech was a fluent portrait painter, producing many portraits throughout his long career but the majority of these works were of family members, friends or acquaintances. Early in his career, after a ... dissatisfied female client rejected her portrait, he decided only to accept commissions from people he knew. His first wife, Elizabeth, was his favourite model from c. 1910 until 1918, exemplified in the works Convent Garden, Brittany and The Sunshade in the National Gallery and The Cigarette and The Tinsel Scarf in the Hugh Lane Gallery. After the First World War, when Leech returned to London, impoverished and his marriage to Elizabeth failing, he was unable to paint. To encourage Leech back into painting, his brother Cecil introduced him to Percy Botterell, a successful London solicitor, who commissioned Leech from 1919 until 1923, to paint his wife May, his two sons, Jim and Guy, his daughter Suzanne, and himself. May Botterell, then replaced Elizabeth as his favourite model and became his lifelong companion. Leech did not accept any further commissions until he undertook, this, his last portrait commission from Chloe Abbott’s father-in-law, in 1965, to paint his new daughter-in-law. Leech, at this time, was depressed after May’s death and felt unable to paint. The portrait took six months to complete with two or three sittings every week. Granted Leech was then over eighty and getting slower. He was not a prolific painter, often waiting long periods for inspiration, for a change of light or for suitable subject matter. His young neighbour in West Clandon, near Guildford in Surrey, Chloe Abbott, befriended him and kept a watchful eye on him because she knew he was depressed, not just because of his loneliness but also because he had been diagnosed with cancer. She was young, vivacious and interested in art and she encouraged Leech to begin painting again. As a result he completed some of his last self-portraits and views of his garden. The day he slipped out of the back of his house in West Clandon and walked to the railway bridge from which he fell, Chloe Abbott was entertaining a friend in her front sitting room and unfortunately missed his departure. Leech recounted his life as an artist to Chloe Abbott. He told her of his years painting in France, which he loved and then, his time in Steele’s Studios, Hampstead, London. He missed the company and the conversation of other artists and the loss of May, his constant companion for forty-six years. Leech has captured the soft youthfulness of this young bride with her hauntingly sad look, perhaps an early indication of a marriage that was not to last long. The artist has lost none of his painterly dexterity in depicting the light, falling on her face and arm, the diagonal thrust of her body, yet capturing a true likeness which made her instantly recognisable to me when I met her nearly a quarter of a century later. Dr Denise Ferran January 200 more