A Shining Palace

Leech visited Switzerland in 1911, travelling through the Aosta Valley from Venice. Many of the paintings from this trip were the subject-matter of his exhibition Visions of Switzerland, Venice etc. by W.J. Leech, R.H.A., at the Goupil Gallery in London in April and May 1912. The reviewer of the exhibition in The Times, 20 April 1912, commented that Leech was 'an artist who aims at vivid illusion by means of that process of elimination which was practised by Whistler. His subjects however, are very different from those of Whistler, and he is not a mere copyist. Where the illusion fails, his pictures are quite empty; but it is strong enough in several of his snow scenes and in his sea-piece Monaco, to compensate for their slightness; indeed the slightness makes the illustion more agreeable, because it seems to be so easily obtained'.

Denise Ferran writes: 'The review highlights Leech's new confidence in painting directly from nature, emphasizing the important elements and eliminating extraneous details. Leech was refining the painterly technique he had developed in Concarneau from 1903 onwards, aware of Whistler's harmonies and fluidity and directness of Lavery's landscapes. The review continues: 'Mr Leech has a hit or miss method dangerous to any one who is not a great master'.
(see William John Leech An Irish Painter Abroad, National Gallery of Ireland exhibition catalogue, Dublin; Musée des Beaux Arts, Quimper; and Ulster Museum, Belfast, 1996-7, pp. 55-6).