Helen Leaver works from a garden studio near Truro. She graduated from the St Ives School of Painting Porthmeor Programme in 2023.
Tara Leaver describes herself as a contemporary abstract painter and online art teacher living in Cornwall.
Based in Penryn, Craig Ledger creates photorealistic portraits in pencil.
Eleanor Lee was born in Lancaster and studied Fine Art at Edinburgh University. She works from Krowji studios in Redruth.
In 1891 Lee was a student of art, though later he turned to literature (writing The Widow Woman). The 1891 Census shows that he shared lodgings at Lower Green St with Robert G MCKINLAY, also an art student about whom nothing further is known.
Jacob Lee is an installation artist working from Krowji Studios in Redruth. He describes his work as 'engaging in issues concerning the stigmatisation of cultural symbols.'
Born in Manchester, Lee studied at Manchester School of Art and at Colorossi's in Paris. There is no record of his studying in St Ives but he visited regularly. After visits to the St Ives Arts Club in October 1896, and again in 1899, the Secretary of the Newlyn Gallery, Phil Whiting, addressed Lee with an invitation to exhibit at NAG. Lee replied from his Holland Park Road Studio (6 The Studios) to say that he would be pleased to send two of his colour prints for the forthcoming exhibition, but could not send more as his others were engaged elsewhere.
As a painter and printmaker, he was known for mountain landscapes, town scenes and architectural subjects from tours in Europe. He was a seminal force in the revival of wood engraving in Britain. He married Edith Mary Elgar, daughter of Frederick Elgar of Rochester, Kent in 1893. The couple lived in Holland Park Road, Kensington from 1909 and had no children. Most respected for his 'black and white' work, his exhibits with STISA were largely restricted to wood engravings and aquatints (although he was also a printmaker, and versatile in a wide range of media). The Sloop Inn, St Ives (1904) was included in both NAG and STISA exhibitions, and The Harbour, St Ives is another of his titles.
On page 107 of her 1936 autobiography Oil Paint and Grease Paint, Laura Knight writes of her time in Staithes, Yorkshire: "Sydney Lee, whom we never knew when he was staying at a cottage up the valley, made a colour print of the old trestle bridge." In 1904, he exhibited On the Bridge, Evening at NEAC, and, in 1905, The Bridge at RBA.
Lee's paintings 'examine a range of themes related to human experience such as memory, desire and identity.'
Phil Whiting exhibited and sold Marazion Marsh in NAG Summer exhibition (32nd) of 1906.
It was at Gwen's suggestion and approach to the local government and museum officials in France, that the Newlyn Society of Artists made their epic visit to Pont Aven in 1977, where Stanhope FORBES and many other artists had met up originally and painted together, before discovery of Newlyn as a painting ground.
A recent correspondent (2012) gave more personal recollection of Gwen, and wrote from Canada: 'Gwen Le Grand lived in Newlyn. She taught art at Heamoor Secondary School during the period 1961 - 1965 and probably a lot earlier and a lot later (under the name Gwen McCarthy - second married name). Kept donkeys that escaped on a regular basis. A biography is likely to be in the Cornishman newspaper at the time of her death (which is unknown to me). She was my old art teacher - and a lovely woman.'
The exhibition in 1977 was organised and led by Jane and Ken SYMONDS, and 13 Newlyn artists accompanied the work from some 40 who participated by sending paintings and sculpture to be seen and sold. 18,000 - 20,000 new people saw and many purchased work from the display. The Poster designed by Mary BERESFORD-WILLIAMS is reproduced in Hardie (1995)
Painter of West Penwith subject; no further information currently available.
Born in Broadwell, Gloucestershire, Leigh trained in architecture and town planning after service in the RAF from 1943 until 1947.
Leighton's connections with Cornwall were through the many and various artists with whom he was related within the Royal Academy. He contributed, along with Stanhope FORBES and others, to the mural commissions being offered to outstanding artists for the central hall of the Royal Exchange in London (1894). The subject of his large decorative panel was Phoenicians trading with the early Britons on the coast of Cornwall.
As a mark of respect for the celebratory opening exhibition of the Newlyn Art Gallery in 1895, Leighton sent down a number of works for display, including a sculpture of a female head, Vittoria, and a group of prints from an earlier stay of his at Kynance. The Newlyn artists were very pleased with this compliment to their new venture from the President of the Academy.
Sir Frederic died the following year. During his life-time he exhibited widely, including seventeen works at the Paris Salons from 1855-1900, though none with a Cornish theme. Nonetheless, his Boy Holding a Vase (oil on canvas) is in the fine art collection of the Royal Cornwall Museum.
Gwen Leitch was born in Tasmania. Thanks to a travelling scholarship she attended the Central School of Arts and Craft in London from 1954 to 1956. There she was taught by Patrick Heron and Roger Hilton. In 1956 she moved to Cornwall and lived with Delia and Patrick Heron at 'Eagles Nest', where she had a small studio space. In 1957 she was the second woman to be awarded a Porthmeor Beach Studio, which she retained until leaving the UK in 1970. She exhibited her work in Cornwall and London, and was an active member of the St Ives arts community and Penwith Art Society. She was part-time curator for the Penwith Arts Society and the Fore Street Gallery between 1959 and 1961, and also managed Bernard Leach's Craftsman Shop.
In 1959 Gwen Leitch married an English painter, Jeffrey HARRIS. Her artistic career became secondary to her role as mother and teacher. Together with her husband and children she returned to Tasmania in 1970. The following year they moved to Australia, settling in Adelaide, where she was able to resume her career, achieving considerable recognition as a painter of landscapes, seascapes and still life.
Gwen Leitch Harris died in Adelaide in 2006.
Two oil paintings by this artist of the Truro River, one of which was painted in 1859, are in the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro. Mountain Scene is another painting of his/hers in the collection there.
Andrew Leniec's paintings employ diverse media such as driftwood and cardboard, to convey his fascination for boats in harbours.
After study at the Slade, London and being a student of Ossip Zadkine in Paris, Leonard worked with Barbara HEPWORTH for five years: 'In the early fifties I gave up my post in charge of sculpture at college and came to work for Barbara Hepworth. The Whitechapel exhibition of her work impressed me tremendously for its purity and idealism. I worked alongside Denis MITCHELL, John WALL, Dicon NANCE and John MILNE. Now I have returned to St Ives to continue my work.'
He finds great inspiration in the purity of geometry, 'because it approaches a metaphysical attitude and reaches a peak in human perception.'
Robin Leonard is a painter of semi-abstract seascapes. Born in Buckinghamshire, he first came to Cornwall in 1981, having studied at Dunstable Art & Design College. He exhibited his work in mid-Cornwall and became an illustrator for the Saint's Way project, working on the Cornish footpath between Padstow and Fowey. After a spell in Switzerland he returned to Cornwall in 2006 and lives in St Austell.
Leonard is a tutor at the Newlyn School of Art (2017).
Lethbridge was a crew member on the local lifeboat, and two of his paintings Wreck of the 'Braemar', May 1967 (acrylic on canvas) and another of the same title and medium, are part of the collection made by the Isles of Scilly Museum.
A painting by this artist of the Historic Flower Tying 1977, depicting the gathering of daffodils in bunches by a group of islanders, ready for their transport to the mainland, is in the collection of the Isles of Scilly Museum.
The Wreck of the 'Schiller' (oil on board) by this artist, is in the collection of the Isles of Scilly Museum.
The artist studied at Chelsea, the Academie Colarossi in Paris, and briefly at Newlyn in 1919. He is identified as enrolling in classes at the FORBES School, by Green in her study Posing the Model.
Soon after WWI Lett-Haines formed a firm friendship with Cedric MORRIS, and together they would later found the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing. Frank DOBSON and Alec George WALKER were also companions during their time in Cornwall, and Morris attracted visitors such as Wyndham Lewis and McKnight Kauffer.
Both Lett-Haines and Morris were enthusiastic and lively, both in work and play, and their social lives in West Cornwall were boisterous and active - sometimes to a level unacceptable amongst the other more conventional artists still present. Even the indefatigable Alfred James MUNNINGS found reasons for objecting to their behaviour. (See entry for Cedric MORRIS for outline chronology, after the two friends departed Cornwall in 1927.)