Morning Coffe and Biscuits

Although he began his art education in Dublin and exhibited there regularly throughout his life, William Leech had strong ties to England and the Continent. After studying in Paris and Brittany, he settled in England and rejected the search for national identity that preoccupied so many of his Irish contemporaries. Strongly influenced by Whistler's philosophy of "art for art's sake," Leech, like Orpen (no. 26), emphasized the importance of color and composition over subject matter. Like his mentor Whistler, Leech remained a representational painter.

Morning Coffee and Biscuits is characteristic of the artist's late work. Seen from above, in the abrupt, angular perspective that Leech frequently employed, the tea cart carries a single setting and an English arts and crafts-style tea cozy. The loose, impressionistic treatment of the sunlit ground recalls Leech's early training with Walter Osborne (nos. 33, 34, 35) and strikes a contrast with the precise rendition of the deck chair in the lower right of the painting.