Among the Welsh hills

Details

BENJAMIN WILLIAMS LEADER (WORCESTER 1831-1923 SURREY)
Among the Welsh hills
signed and dated 'B.W. LEADER. 1896.' (lower left)
oil on canvas
27 7/8 x 42 in. (70.7 x 106.7 cm.)

Provenance

Anonymous sale; Christie's, London, 20 March 1998, lot 14, when acquired by the present owner.

Exhibited

(Possibly) London, Royal Academy, 1898, no. 188, as In a Welsh Valley.

Special notice

This lot is offered without reserve. This lot has been imported from outside of the UK for sale and placed under the Temporary Admission regime. Import VAT is payable at 5% on the hammer price. VAT at 20% will be added to the buyer’s premium but will not be shown separately on our invoice.

Conditions of sale

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Lot Essay

This spectacular view by Leader is similar in scale to A Quiet Valley among the Welsh Hills (1860, Worcester City Museums) and A Fine Autumn Day, North Wales (1866, Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery). The painting illustrates a solitary walker and his dog making their way across gorse and heather-cloaked terrain, beside a vast mountain lake. Leader has suffused the composition with peaceful grandeur, the still water reflecting the mountain range beyond and the billowing clouds above. North Wales was a favourite sketching ground for Leader. He visited it almost every summer from the late 1850s until 1889: ‘The scenes of these studies he has found in England, Wales, and Switzerland, are as varied in character as they are conscientious and masterly in execution. The various aspects of morning, noon, and night, have all been carefully noted’ (The Art Journal, 1879, p. 13).

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