About this lot

Description

Design for a train carriage gouache 27 x 49cm

Footnote: Provenance: The artist's estate With Harry Moore-Gwyn Fine Art Limited, London A celebrated portraitist and an important figure in the revival of tempera in Britain, Gerald Leet is remembered as much for his neo-Romantic paintings as he is for his skilled raconteurship and his eccentricities as a collector of books, paintings and works of art. Born in London in 1913, Leet received his training at Goldsmiths, the Royal College of Art, and later at the Courtauld Institute. In 1945, during his military service, Leet’s talents for draughtsmanship were recognised by Lord Wavell, then Viceroy of India, who arranged for Leet to be appointed as an official war artist stationed in New Delhi. In the years that followed, Leet worked as drawing assistant to Wilfred Blunt at Eton College and, from 1949, at Brighton College of Art. He also executed a series of portraits of Queen Elizabeth and her courtiers. Although Leet’s design for a train carriage, likely dating from the 1930s, does not appear to ever have been realised, it is important as a document of British social history.

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