Beschreibung:

HAYSTACK William John Leech RHA ROI (1881-1968)
Signature: signed lower left; inscribed with title on original label on reverse Medium: oil on panel Dimensions: 15.5 by 13.5in., 38.75 by 33.75cm. Provenance: Kitty Le Marquand, Jersey; Thence to her son, the late Richard Wigginton;By whom given to the previous owner;Whyte's, 29 September 2008, lot 109;Private collection Exhibited: Possibly 'Paintings by William J. Leech RHA', Dawson Gallery, Dublin, 1-8 June 1945, catalogue no. 8 (£35) Haystack epitomises Leech’s awareness of Monet’s work and his assimilation of Impressionism, first apparent in Leech’s paintings of c.1912. The more strident yellows and greens of A Secret Garden and ... A Convent Garden are resolved into a harmonious arrangement of the foreground’s pink and blue shadows in Haystack, which contrasts against the yellow greens of the newly-mown meadow. The change in Leech’s painting technique is apparent; textured strokes have been replaced by smooth brush strokes, freely drawn, leaving areas of the support to shine through. This free execution indicates that Leech probably painted this work directly in the landscape, perhaps from the upper level of the Devon Cider barn, with its wide opening, planned for easy access of loads of apples but ideal as an artist’s advantage viewpoint and studio workspace. The Blitz of 1941 twice damaged Leech’s Steele’s Studio in Hampstead but May Botterell’s Abbey Road flat escaped damage and became home and studio for them both. Leech’s family, especially his brother Cecil and wife ‘Babs’, who ran an apple orchard in Devon, provided a refuge for the couple in the countryside away from the bombings in London for months at this time. Cecil Leech cleared the upper part of one of the cider barns as a studio for his younger brother William John who began a series of paintings of farmyard gates, meadows of hay and apple orchards during these war years, a respite from London back gardens and views from the fifth floor of May’s flat. Leech exhibited a similar work, A Haystack, at the RHA in 1944, the same year he exhibited Back Gardens and A War Time Garden, all care of Leo Smith. This present work was probably included in Leech’s first solo exhibition at the Dawson Gallery in June 1945. He exhibited his oil Haystack and Window, Evening, which depicts a haystack in a farmyard scene with chickens, at the Oireachtas Exhibition of 1945 and at the RHA in 1948 and which was also included in Leech’s exhibition with Frances Kelly and Evie Hone at the Dawson Gallery in July/August 1953. His journeys to France were ended by the Second World War and Leech was never to return to his earlier Breton subject matter or his later paintings in the South of France. These were replaced by sunlit Regent Park gardens, flowers on windowsills and later his garden at Candy Cottage, but during the war years his work focuses on a series of haystacks in farmyards framed though open windows or, as in Haystack, through a five barred wooden gate and the diagonal trunk of a nearby tree. Dr Denise Ferra more