Derwent Lees

Derwent Lees (14 November 1884 – 24 March 1931) was an Australian landscape painter.

Biography

Derwent Lees was born in Hobart, Australia, in November 1884. His father was general manager of the Union Bank of Australia.[1] He studied at Melbourne Grammar School in 1899–1900,[2] and later lost a foot in a riding accident, subsequently wearing a wooden prosthetic foot. He moved to London in 1905 and, following a brief stay in Paris, commenced his studies at the Slade School of Fine Art under the supervision of Henry Tonks and Frederick Brown. While still a student, he was invited to join the Slade staff in late 1907, a position he held for ten years.

His earliest known works are pencil drawings created in c.1907 while at the Slade School. These remain held by the UCL Art Museum. He regularly exhibited at the Goupil Galleries and the Chenil Gallery in Chelsea and with the Friday Club. He was one of the founding members of Vanessa Bell’ Friday Club,[3] and was invited to become a member of the New English Art Club in 1911, and in 1913 his works were shown at the renowned Armory Show (the first International Exhibition of Modern Art), in New York.[4]

He was a friend of Augustus John and James Dickson Innes, and from late 1910 to 1913, painted with them in north Wales,[5] then again with Augustus John in 1914. In 1910, accompanied by Innes and another Slade colleague, Lees went on a painting trip to Collioure in France.[6] This was five years after the fervour of the Fauvist movement. He returned to southern France another three times prior to WWI.

Lees married his model-muse, Edith Harriet Price (1890-1984), in the summer of 1913. Under the artist-model pseudonym "Lyndra", she was one of Lees and Augustus John's principal pre-WWI models.

His artistic career was curtailed by poverty and subsequent mental health problems, which saw him confined to asylums, initially in 1918, then permanently from 1919 until his death in 1931 at West Park Hospital, Epsom.

In 1936 his work 'Dorset Scene' was exhibited posthumously at the Venice Biennale, probably by his widow, as Great Britain did not contribute any works that year due to political tensions.[7]

Selected paintings

Selected Works in Collections

Title Year Medium Gallery no. Gallery Location
Lyndra at the Pool 1913 Oil on wood panel 76.358 National Gallery of Australia Canberra, Australia
Four Heads c.1911 Pencil & paper H1979.5 Brighton and Hove Museums Brighton, England
Landscape at Collioure 1910 Watercolour & gouache on paper N04241 Tate Gallery London, England
The Awakening 1910 Watercolour, pen & ink 79.2588 National Gallery of Australia Canberra, Australia
Lyndra in Wales 1914 Oil on paper 2450 Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge, England
Evening 1911 Oil on canvas 9684 Government Art Collection London, England
Girl in a Black Hat 1914 Oil on wood panel 1888-4 National Gallery of Victoria Melbourne, Australia
Métairie des Abeilles 1912 Oil on wood N05355 Tate Gallery[8] London, England
Métairie des Abeilles 1909 Watercolour on paper N05356 Tate Gallery London, England
Mas Reig, Banyuls a.k.a. Spanish Landscape 1912 Oil on wood panel 76.359 National Gallery of Australia Canberra, Australia
The Round Hill, Banyales a.k.a. Spanish Landscape 1914 Oil on board H1990.24 Brighton and Hove Museums Brighton, England
Portrait of Lyndra, the Artist's Wife 1913 Pencil & paper & board H1981.7 Brighton and Hove Museums Brighton, England
Lyndra in a Landscape 1913 Oil on wood panel 1821-4 National Gallery of Victoria Melbourne, Australia
Pear Tree in Blossom 1913 Oil on wood N05021 Tate Gallery London, England
Lyndra at Tanygrisiau a.k.a. Girl Seated 1914 Oil on wood panel 1957-0014-3 Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa Wellington, New Zealand
Tan-Y-Bwlch a.k.a. The Yellow Skirt 1914 Oil on wood panel 127080 Carrick Hill Adelaide, Australia
Self Portrait 1919 Etching D5046 National Portrait Gallery London, England
Not titled [Eve holding the apple] c.1909 Watercolour, pen & ink, pencil on cardboard 79.1517 National Gallery of Australia Canberra, Australia
Not titled [Portrait study: Woman with head turned to the right] 1915-1918 Brush & ink & pencil on paper 79.15153 National Gallery of Australia Canberra, Australia
Profile, Lyndra a.k.a. Profile portrait of a woman 1913 Pencil on paper 79.1515 National Gallery of Australia Canberra, Australia
Essil Elmslie Reading a.k.a. Woman reading 1911 Pencil, ink & pen on paper 79.1516 National Gallery of Australia Canberra, Australia
Portrait of an Unknown Woman a.k.a. Lady Howard de Walden c.1913 Pencil on paper FA101413 Brighton and Hove Museums Brighton, England
Snow on Welsh Mountains a.k.a. Welsh Landscape in Winter c.1911 Oil on wood panel 1951.1086 Glynn Vivian Art Gallery Swansea, Wales

References

  1. ^ Davies, Lynn (2025). Derwent Lees : art and life. London: Lund Humphries. p. 9. ISBN 9781848227118. OCLC 1481473162.
  2. ^ 29 artworks by or after Derwent Lees, Art UK: see extended Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists biography, under "artist profile". Retrieved 13 June 2016.
  3. ^ Spalding, Frances (1983). Vanessa Bell. England: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. p. 56. ISBN 9780297781622.
  4. ^ Giles Auty, "Exuberance truncated", Weekend Australian, 19–20 July 1997, p. 12
  5. ^ Simons and Hoole, Margaret and John (2013). James Dickson Innes. Lund Humphries. pp. 30–32. ISBN 9781848221390. OCLC 865659304.
  6. ^ "Carrick Hill". Archived from the original on 22 August 2011. Retrieved 25 June 2011.
  7. ^ Kerry Gardner (2021) 'Australia at the Venice Biennale: A Century of Contemporary Art' The Migunyah Press, ISBN 978-0-522-87736-6
  8. ^ Tate Collection: Derwent Lees

Further reading

  • Derwent Lees, "Drawings", The Blue Review, Vol. I No. I (May, 1913).
  • Alleyne Zander, "Derwent Lees", Art in Australia, series 3, no. 48, Feb 1933.
  • Eric Rowan, Some miraculous promised land: J. D. Innes, Augustus John and Derwent Lees in North Wales 1910–13, Llandudno: Mostyn Art Gallery, 1982.
  • Merlin James, "Derwent Lees", The London Magazine, Feb/Mar 1992.
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