AX 193 MS

 

GEORGE DUNLOP LESLIE, R.A

1835 - London - 1921

 

Clarissa

 

Signed and dated

Canvas: 24 x 18 in / 61 x 46 cm

 

Provenance:

Thomas Agnew and Sons Ltd.

 

Exhibited:

Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1866, no. 410

Richard Green Gallery, London, A Fine Collection of Nineteenth Century Paintings, 2001

 

 

In this painting, Leslie has depicted his subject model, Clarissa, in a cottage garden scene.  His paintings of young women were much admired, as this praise from the critic of the Art Journal, one of the most respected art periodicals of the Victorian period, shows:

“The painter understands thoroughly the sources of a certain delicate beauty proper to a refined type of English girlhood, and he has the power--genuinely artistic in its kind--to bring all the materials of the composition into accord with the dainty spirit that inspires it.” (Cited in Art Journal, 1874, p.163)

 

George Dunlop Leslie painted a variety of subjects including genre scenes and landscapes, but interior views were his most admired subjects.  He was the son of Charles Robert Leslie a painter of historical genre scenes, under whom George first studied.  He completed his artistic education at the Royal Academy Schools.

 

Leslie also learned and developed as an artist as a member of the St John’s Wood Clique.  This group of artists met every Saturday at a different member’s house in order to draw a given subject together.  Each artist’s drawing was then ‘grilled’, a ritual implicit within the Clique's badge, a miniature grid iron inscribed with the motto, Ever on thee.  After the rigours of the grilling, the members of the Clique indulged in merrier pleasures.  The Clique claimed many important members including Philip Hermogenes Calderon, Henry Stacy Marks, John Evan Hodgson, George Adolphus Storey, David Wilkie Wynfield and William Frederick Neames.

 

He followed Pre-Raphaelitism briefly, and afterwards favoured painting children and girls in landscape settings.  Leslie exhibited regularly throughout his career at the Royal Academy, of which he was elected member in 1876.  He also exhibited at the British Institution, the Society of British Artists, Suffolk Street, the Grosvenor Gallery, Bond Street and the New Gallery, Regent Street. 

 

The work of G. D. Leslie is represented in Tate Britain, London, and in museums in Manchester, Bristol, Aberdeen, Hamburg and Sydney.