Derwent Lees

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

Self-portrait

Biography

Derwent 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

Works in collections
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
  1. 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.
  2. Giles Auty, "Exuberance truncated", Weekend Australian, 19–20 July 1997, p. 12
  3. "Carrick Hill". Archived from the original on 22 August 2011. Retrieved 25 June 2011.
  4. Kerry Gardner (2021) 'Australia at the Venice Biennale: A Century of Contemporary Art' The Migunyah Press, ISBN 978-0-522-87736-6
  5. Tate Collection: Derwent Lees

.

6. Henry R Lew, "In Search of Derwent Lees", privately published by Henry R Lew, Melbourne, Australia 1996. (Until 2023 this was the definitive work on Derwent Lees.) ISBN Collectors Edition 0-646-28384-7; Standard Hard Cover 0-646-28383-9; Paperback 0-646-28382-0.

7. Henry R. Lew, "J.D. Innes and Derwent Lees", The Australasian Antique Collector, Dec 1997–June 1998.

8. Henry R. Lew, "Imaging the World", Hybrid Publishers, 2018, Chapter 12 Derwent Lees. ISBN 9781925272819.

9. Henry R Lew, "Australian Genesis and Exodus - the stories of Derwent Lees and Horace Brodzky, their lives, their families and their in-common friends and acquaintances", Hybrid Publishers, 2023. (This is currently the definitive work on Derwent Lees.) ISBN 9781922768032.

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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