An Octogenarian Artist.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVI, Issue 18, 1 November 1911, Page 7

An Octogenarian Artist.

’anecdotes of millais and cox- • STABLE. ’ feE-AUKISCENCES OF MR. B. W. LEADER. 'Mr B. W. Leader, R.A.—painter of ‘‘February Fill Dyke” and scores of other popular landscapes—is now eighty vears of age. At his home near Guildford recently he put his finishing {ouches to the three pictures by which he ivill be represented in this year’s Academy—“ Looking Down a Welsh River,” “A Sunny Day, North Wales,” and. “Low Tide on tire South Coast.” A “Dailv News” -representative who had a chat' with Mr. Leader at the Arts Club in Dover-street found it hard to realise that the hale old man, with the brisk step and firm hand-grip, who criticised the Post-Impressionists with such vigour, had played at the feet of Constable as a boy and exhibited his first picture at the Royal Academy about 60 fears ago. Mr. Leader’s memories of Constable cluster for the most part round a visit iwhich the great artist paid in the year Of Queen Vietotfiafs accession to his father's house at Worcester. “After the 1837 visit,” Mr. Leader recalled, “Constable took back with him to town a copy of one of his landscapes which my father had made, and which he intended* to do some work on. When he Hied, not long after, my father said: ‘.Mark my word, that picture of mine will be sold as a genuine Constable.’ And so it was, for I saw it with my own eyes in later years hanging at the Grafton Gallery as an item in a Constable exhibition!” STORIES OF CONSTABLE. The visit seems to have been a very happy one. “We children —I was only six years old —called him Mr. Dunstable, because we happened to be wearing Dunstable straw hats,” said Mr. Leader, with a smile at the memory. “I remember so well how he would go out before breakfast and return laden with dock leaves, wild roses, and such treasures, which he would arrange as a sort of table decoration, saying to my mother, ‘Look at the dewjust like a pearl.’ or, ‘See the sunset tint in that rose.’ He was a delightful man with children, though Frith used to tell me he was a sarcastic and disappointed fellow.” Constable, of course, had many reasons for grumbling at Fate. Mr. Leader, on the other hand, has been singularly fortunate. “I was the son of a professional man with a large family,” lie observed, “and had to maintain myself from the first by my art. Consequently I was obliged, in .some degree, to paint the pictures which the public liked, and not the pictures I wanted them to like. Many’s the time I have wished I could destroy a number of those early pot-'boilers. “This reminds me that even Millais had the same sort of feeling. We were (together one day at an exhibition in the Grosvenor Gallery, which represented practically the whole of Millais’ output up till that date, when he exclaimed, "Suppose there were a fire here, and all these were destroyed, what a dreadful thing to lose all one’s life-work at a Wow!’ Then, he added, seriously. ‘But I should like to see half .of. them destroyed—if .1 . were allowed to choose the half." Mr. Leader’s first art leaping—or, perhaps more correctly, his second, for Con-

stable was his earliest! as'also his latest, love — was djetfnetly -towards Pre Raphaelitism. He was fascinated by the “earnestness’ and “scrupulous attention to truth” which marked the work of tha school, and the Pre-Raphaelites, in their turn, admired his almost instinctive executive ability. A PAINSTAKING ARTIST. “One varnishing day,” Mr. Leader observed, when the point was raised, “Millais said, looking at my latest landscape, ‘Confound you, Leader, you seem to get the thing at once, while I have to work and fumble.’ Then he asked me to touch up one of his pictures he was showing, in which the mountains came very hard against the sky. When I had been working at it for five or ten minutes up came Vai Prinsep, shouting, ‘what on earth are you doing there, spoiling Millais’ picture'?’ But Millais insisted on having his own way, telling Prinsep to ‘be off and mind his own business.’ So I finished the little job—to Millais’ satisfaction—and the picture was duly hung.” In his method of work Mr. Leader has ■been a diseiple of no man. It is his custom to make five or six studies of a subject in the open air, and when working from these in the studo to complete each object, or section, of the picture in all its essential details before proceeding with the next. The component parts of the landscape are afterwards ‘brought together,” i.e., harmonised as to tone and other general characteristics. As may be expected, Mr. Leader is a •fierce opponent of Post-Impressionism, though he regards himself as “broadminded,” and makes a point of visiting all the London exhibitions. “Nature is beautiful —infinitely beautiful. The Post-Impressionists are sufficiently condemned for me by the fact that they represent Nature as ugly,” he exclaimed. In that saying may probably be found the secret of Mr. Leader’s vast popularity especially in America and Australia, as a painter of the Home Land.