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...

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. Exhibited:The Frederick Gallery, Spring Exhibition, April 2002, catalogue no. 1; ''The French Connection'', The Ava Gallery, Clandeboye, August-September 2010, and the Hunt Museum Limerick, September-October 2010, Cat. No. 18; and ''A Celebration of Irish Art and Modernism'', The Ava Gallery, Clandeboye, June-September 2011, Cat. No. 29, full page illustration p38 A French Quayside captures a typical summers evening scene along the dock of the fishing village 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 Concarneau, 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 included 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 sunlight 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 diagonally 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

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