Life
1881-1968; b. Rutland Square, Dublin; son of law professor at TCD; ed. St. Columba’s and Metropolitan
School of Art, studying under Walter Osborne; proceeded to Academie Julien; showed at RHA, 1900 and received the Taylor Scholarship for “A Lesson on the Violin” and “The Toiler”; becoming an Academician in 1910; lived in Brittainy, 1902-1916; received bronze
medal of Société des Artistes Françaises, 1914; settled in London after 1916; showed at Irish exhibitions in Paris
and Brussels; d. 16 July, Guilford, Surrey; placed picture plane on diagonal and
not on the horizontal of the canvas. DIB
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Criticism
Denise Ferran, William John Lech: an Irish painter abroad (London:
Merrell Holberton 1996), 300pp.
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References
John Sutherland, The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction (Longmans
1988; rep. 1989), lists John Leech (1817-64), illustrator and artist of
Irish background, who illustrated some of the best-known of Dickens’s
Christmas stories.
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