46
33
William John Leech RHA (1881-1968)
“A French Quayside”
Oil on canvas, 44.5 x 80.5cm (17½ x 31¾”)
Signed
Provenance: Sold in Christie’s London, May 1952, to a private Swedish collector
Mr Rymander, from whom acquired
A French Quayside
captures a typical summer’s evening scene along the dock of the fishing vil-
lage of Concarneau, with similar subject matter to
A Sunny Afternoon, Concarneau
, dated 1907
(illustrated p.121 Leech: An Irish Painter Abroad).
Thomas Bodkin in his review of the 1909 RHA exhibition wrote: “
A Sunny Afternoon in Con-
carneau
, is charming for its atmospheric clearness, good perspective and other artistic points,
which almost make the spectator think he is looking at a real scene instead of a picture…”
Leech proudly recalled in later years that Nathaniel Hone bought his works from the RHA.
Similar qualities are embraced in
A French Quayside
but here the sails are down in the tuna
fishing boat and the fishermen have departed, but the main group on the quayside are in-
cluded in similar poses in front of the row of shops, the coiffeur and the bar. A similar evening
light bathes the harbour and the water is painted in Leech’s freer brushstrokes, in a manner of
Monet. From 1903 when Leech left Paris to paint in Brittany he focused on painting the sun-
light of the Breton port and his work progressed from the darker tones of
Boats at Concarneau
(ibid. illus. P.129) to the confidence of
A French Quayside
. Although a slightly smaller work
than
A Sunny Afternoon in Concarneau, A French Quayside
is not a study for
A Sunny Afternoon,
Concarneau
but a different version of a theme and may indeed have been a sequel to
A Sunny
Afternoon, Concarneau.
Like his contemporaries Leech used postcards which depicted scenes
of the fishing town for his paintings, and he also used photographs, so it is conceivable that
these two paintings are derived from the same source.
A French Quayside
is a complete work with the boat in the foreground expanse of water di-
agonally drawing the viewer to the calm horizontal of the sunlit quayside. In this work Leech
has omitted the two moored boats, which he included on the left of
A Sunny Afternoon in
Concarneau
and the extended shop frontage, but undoubtedly both paintings date from the
same period, 1907, when Leech was at his most confident with his subject matter and paint
handling.
Dr. Denise Ferran
€80,000 - 120,000
The Frederick Gallery, Spring Exhibition, April 2002, catalogue no. 1;
“The French Connection”, The Ava Gallery, Clandeboye, August-Sep-
tember 2010, and the Hunt Museum Limerick, September-October 2010,
Cat. No. 18; and
“A Celebration of Irish Art and Modernism”, The Ava Gallery, Clande-
boye, June-September 2011, Cat. No. 29, full page illustration p38
Exhibited:
