William John Leech RHA ROI (1881-1968)
St. Anne and the Poppies
Oil on canvas, 55 x 46cm (21½ x 18'')
Signed; inscribed verso

When Leechs parents departed their Dublin home, Wilmar, Dartry...

William John Leech RHA ROI (1881-1968)
St. Anne and the Poppies
Oil on canvas, 55 x 46cm (21½ x 18'')
Signed; inscribed verso

When Leechs parents departed their Dublin home, Wilmar, Dartry Road, for London in 1910, Leech divided his life between London and France, from then until after the First World War. During this period, he lived in Concarneau, in Brittany with his American partner, fellow artist Saurin Elizabeth Kerlin, who became his wife in 1912. However, after Leechs first visit to Concarneau in 1903, where he first met Elizabeth, he returned again in 1904, at the same time that Lavery returned to paint with his friend Milner Kite. Kites painting style and bright palette influenced Leech, which is evident in Leechs painting Caves in Concarneau with its Fauve colours. St.Anne and the Poppies has echoes of this palette with the bright orange of the poppies, one of which makes a halo behind St. Annes head, contrasted against the strong greens and blues in the foreground and background.

 

Brittany was, and indeed, still is a religious area of France and the earliest saint associated with the region is St. Anne with LEglise du Sainte-Anne du Pasage, in Concarneau. It was customary to create a small altar to St. Anne in homes, with a vase of flowers and candles, as in this painting. This was a suitable subject for Leech, in his use of strident colour bathed in strong sunlight, coming from the left. Traditionally St. Anne was depicted in two main colours, red and green, one for love and the other for rebirth, as she was the mother of the Virgin Mary. The Gospel of St. James, details the life of St. Anne who was from Bethlehem and her husband Joachim, who was from Nazareth, both described as being from the House of David.

 

Traditionally too, the statue of St. Anne usually has a young Mary beside her but in this work St. Anne has the figure of a Rabbi. This work has all the hallmarks of a later Leech, in the diagonal created by the fallen poppy on the table top, the effect of light on the glass vase and the stems and leaves of the poppy in his search for sunlight and shadows.

 

As Leech has inscribed RHA after his name, this work dates after 1910 when Leech rented a large house, overlooking the sea at Plage des Dames, a sheltered curved bay of silvery, shingled sand, on the outskirts of Concarneau. Leech continued to painted some of his best work between 1910 and 1918, before the effects of the Great War and the breakup of his marriage in 1919, which destroyed these times of happiness and hope and this period of his life.

 

Dr Denise Ferran

February 2020

 

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