Derwent Lees (14 November 1884 – 24 March 1931) was an Australian landscape painter.
Biography
editDerwent Lees was born Desmond Lees in Hobart, Australia, in 1884. His father was general manager of the Union Bank of Australia. He suffered a head injury and lost a foot in a riding accident as a youth, while studying at Melbourne Grammar School in 1899–1900.[1] Afterwards, he wore a wooden prosthetic. Following a brief stay in Paris, he moved to London in 1905 and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art with Henry Tonks and Frederick Brown. He joined its staff in 1908 while still a student, and remained there, on and off, for ten years.
He was a member of the New English Art Club from 1911. The earliest known pencil work of a model is from 1909 while at the Slade school and is held in a private collection in Doreen, Victoria, Australia. He also exhibited at the Goupil Galleries and the Chenil Gallery in Chelsea. His work was shown in the Twentieth Century Art Review Exhibition of 1914 and the Armory Show in New York, where he was the only Australian artist represented.[2]
He was a friend of Augustus John and James Dickson Innes, and spent the period from late 1910 to 1912 with them at a cottage called Nant Ddu in north Wales. He married his wife, Edith Harriet Price (1890-1984), in 1913. Under the name "Lyndra", she was one of Augustus John's former models. In 1912 Innes and Lees went on another painting trip to Collioure in France.[3] This was shortly after the beginning of the Fauvist movement and he is the only Australian artist known to have had any connection with them.
His artistic career was curtailed by a mental health problem, diagnosed as schizophrenia in 1912, which eventually saw him confined to asylums in Surrey from 1918 until his death in 1931 at West Park Hospital, Epsom.
In 1936 his work 'Dorset Scene' was exhibited posthumously in the Venice Biennale by Great Britain.[4]
Selected paintings
edit-
Lyndra by the Blue Pool, Dorset (1913), Art Gallery of South Australia -
Tour Madeloc in the Pyrenees (c. 1913), Yale Center for British Art -
Sunset Over the Dalmatian Coast -
Fitzroy Square from Sickert's Old Studio -
Lyndra in the Garden
Works in collections
edit| Title | Year | Medium | Gallery no. | Gallery | Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lyndra at the Pool | 1913 | Oil on wood panel | 29025 | National Gallery of Australia | Canberra, Australia |
| Four Heads | 1910 | 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 | 63973 | National Gallery of Australia | Canberra, Australia |
| Lyndria in Wales | 1910-14 | Oil on paper | 2450 | Fitzwilliam Museum | Cambridge, England |
| Evening | 1911 | Oil on canvas | 9684 | Government Art Collection | London, England |
| Girl in a Black Hat | 1912 | Oil on wood panel | 1888-4 | National Gallery of Victoria | Melbourne, Australia |
| Metairie des Abeilles | 1912 | Oil on wood | N05355 | Tate Gallery[5] | London, England |
| Metairie des Abeilles | 1912 | Watercolour on paper | N05356 | Tate Gallery | London, England |
| Spanish Landscape | 1912 | Oil on wood panel | 29026 | National Gallery of Australia | Canberra, Australia |
| Spanish Landscape | 1912-14 | Oil on board | H1990.24 | Brighton and Hove Museums | Brighton, England |
| 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 | 1913-1914(?) | Oil on wood panel | 1957-0014-3 | Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa | Wellington, New Zealand |
| The Yellow Skirt | 1914 | Oil on wood panel | 127080 | National Gallery of Australia | Canberra, Australia |
| Self Portrait | 1917 | Etching | D5046 | National Portrait Gallery | London, England |
| Not titled [Eve holding the apple] | 1920-29 | Watercolour, pen & ink, pencil on cardboard | 57603 | National Gallery of Australia | Canberra, Australia |
| Not titled [Portrait study: Woman with head turned to the right] | 1920-29 | Brush & ink & pencil on paper | 57591 | National Gallery of Australia | Canberra, Australia |
| Not titled [Profile portrait of a woman] | 1920-29 | Pencil on paper | 57597 | National Gallery of Australia | Canberra, Australia |
| Not titled [Woman reading] | 1920-29 | Pencil, ink & pen on paper | 57600 | National Gallery of Australia | Canberra, Australia |
| Lady Howard de Walden | Pencil on paper | FA101413 | Brighton and Hove Museums | Brighton, England | |
| Welsh Landscape in Winter | Oil on wood panel | 1951.1086 | Glynn Vivian Art Gallery | Swansea, Wales |
References
edit- ^ 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.
- ^ Giles Auty, "Exuberance truncated", Weekend Australian, 19–20 July 1997, p. 12
- ^ "Carrick Hill". Archived from the original on 22 August 2011. Retrieved 25 June 2011.
- ^ Kerry Gardner (2021) 'Australia at the Venice Biennale: A Century of Contemporary Art' The Migunyah Press, ISBN 978-0-522-87736-6
- ^ Tate Collection: Derwent Lees
Further reading
edit- 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.
External links
edit
- More works by Lees @ ArtNet
- Derwent Lees @ Epsom and Ewell History Explorer