WILLIAM JOHN LEECH, RHA (1881-1968)
Statue of Fragonard, Grasse
Oil on canvas
Brian P. Burns Collection

Statue of Fragonard, Grasse

William John Leech's lifelong admiration for French painting was fired in part by his love of the south of France, for so long a source of inspiration to twentieth-century French painting. Statue of Fragonard, Grasse, painted shortly after the end of WWI, comes from one of Leech's finest periods. The sculpture refers to the eighteenth-century French painter, Honoré Fragonard, who was born in Grasse. The economy and abstractness of the design, coupled with the restraint and subtlety of the muted hues, indicates what a remarkable and original painter Leech was and how much he could adapt his French sources to his own particular pictorial needs and interests.