William Leech, R.H.A. 1881-1968

The present work is closely related to Leech’s magnificent, 45-inch wide A Sunny Afternoon, Concarneau (private collection) which is clearly, and unusually for the artist, dated 1908. Both works depict sections of the long harbour quayside of the Breton port. Contemporary photographic panoramas du port et des quais show the great length and, depending on the tide, height, of this brick structure, that was more than capable of dwarfing any fleet moored alongside. A slip at one end permits access from the boats when the tide leaves them beached on their hulls, or alternatively embedded iron ladders reach up towards the bollarded promenade at the top. This walkway was lined on one side by shops, bars, hairdressers and other commercial establishments, which derived a steady living from the tuna and sardine fishing industry that was based out of the harbour at this time.

Also painted in 1908 was Leech’s The Green Room – Interior of a Café, and with Interior of a Barber’s Shop, painted the following year, both paintings make use of a similar palette to Concarneau. The variations of umber, green, ochre, cream and a warmer mahogany recall the northern European tradition, as filtered through the Antwerp and Paris academies and further modulated by Whistler and Sickert in their London and Dieppe river scenes. The interior and exterior works of this year also make use of a grid structure which anchors the composition and allows the muted colours to occupy distinct and separate zones, that they might balance each other in a harmony that is ordered and controlled. The café scene is so sub-divided into squares and rectangles that it is hard to tell which sections might be actuality, and which are rather plate glass reflections. The same scheme in Concarneau uses the empty quay to divide the buildings from the harbour basin, with the mast and rigging of the solitary fishing boat, and the doors, windows and gable-end of the cottage providing the vertical axes that lend dynamism to this tri-partite arrangement.

Claiming a rightful place amongst these comparable works, Concarneau also points the direction that the artist was to pursue with increasing success the following decade. Although the work appears to adopt a particularly high viewpoint, quite possibly adapted from Degas, it was most probably painted sur le motif, to serve as a key for such essentially studio pieces as A Sunny Afternoon, Concarneau. The flashes of sunlight on the white rendered walls and dappled in the waters below impart a sense of warmth and air that is not apparent in the more mannered and ‘closed’ interior studies. It suggests the quickness and immediacy of touch associated with Impressionism, and to be realised so vividly in Leech’s own The Secret Garden just a few years later (see lot 24). Appropriately, the harbour lies just a few minutes walk from the convent and its ‘secret’ garden. Concarneau was thus painted at something of an evolutionary point for the artist. The scene here is deceptively quiet: Leech’s artist companion Sydney Lough Thompson described in his memoirs how "sometimes in one day two or three hundred tunny boats would arrive and that meant between fourteen to two thousand fisherman from all parts of the coast, living crowded on the wharf and in the cafés. Men excited by having made a big catch or not having caught anything" (quoted in Denise Ferran, William John Leech: An Irish Painter Abroad, Merrel Holberton, London, 1996, p.120). A similar upheaval was about to take place in Leech’s work, and the groundwork is laid here.