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LEECH, After John (1817-1864)
'The Mermaid's Hunt' [from the artist's 'Sketches in Oil' series]
London: Thos. Agnew & Sons, 2 January 1865. Chromolithograph, on original mount bearing lithographed facsimile manuscript signature and title. Sheet size: 15 5/8 x 23 5/8 inches.
A delightful image of fashionable young ladies sketching, fossil hunting, riding and examining rock pools on the beach.
An unusually large scale work from the famous illustrator of Dickens, Surtees, Thackeray and others. In 1862 John Leech 'essayed a series of so-called "sketches in oil," which were exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, in June and the following months. These consisted of copies of a selection of his Punch drawings, which had been ingeniously enlarged, transferred to canvas, and coloured lightly in oils. As the artist advanced with this process he considerably improved it in detail, and his exhibition was a great success (it brought him nearly 5,000 pounds), to which a friendly notice by Thackeray (Times, 21 June) not a little contributed.... His gift for seizing fugitive expression and for mentally registering transitory situation was extraordinary. Long practice had made it unerring in its way, and Leech perhaps wisely concentrated his attention upon these points. Yet he possessed, like Keene, a marvellous faculty for landscape, and in many cases the backgrounds to his sketches are in themselves of striking beauty. No words define his general position in art better than Mr. Ruskin's: His work contains the finest definition and natural history of the classes of our society; the kindest and subtlest analysis of its foibles, the tenderest flattery of its pretty and well-bred ways, with which the modesty of subservient genius ever immortalised or amused careless masters. (DNB).
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#6277 $650.00 
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© 2002-2005 Donald A. Heald
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