William Leech, R.H.A.

The Artist's descendants

Possibly London, Goupil Gallery, April - May 1912, no.10, as The Grey Bridge;
Possibly Belfast, Public Art Gallery and Museum, 1913, as The Grey Bridge;
Possibly Dublin, Royal Hibernian Academy, 1913, no.308, as Through a Bridge;
London, Pyms Gallery, Truth to Nature (French British and Irish Painting of the 19th and 20th Centuries), 18 April - 18 May 1996, no.29, as The Bridge, illustrated in the catalogue;
Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland, William John Leech - An Irish Painter Abroad, 8 October - 15 December 1996, with tour to Quimper and Belfast, no.31, illustrated in the catalogue.

The colours are much brigher and fresher than the illustration suggests, notably the white and blue tones. Original canvas which is slightly loose on its stretcher. In good overall condition with some very strong passages of toothpaste impasto, notably along the bridge and to the water. Under ultraviolet light, there are some tiny scattered flecks of retouching to the water mainly in the centre. Held in a plaster gilt frame.
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Leech spent the winter between 1911 and 1912 in Paris with Elizabeth Kerlin, who he later married in June 1912. The present work was probably executed either during this trip or during another one of his other prolonged stays in Paris between 1911 and 1913.

Although the present work is simply titled The Bridge at Paris, a work entitled Pont Philippe, Ile St Louis, Paris was exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin in 1915 and it is probable that this was a smaller version of the present work. Built in 1862 during Haussmann's redesign of the French capital, the Pont Louis Philippe replaced an earlier suspension bridge linking the Ile St Louis with the right bank and it was the only bridge in Paris to have been constructed with a block granite core faced with limestone keystones and surmounted by a classical pediment and balustrade. The viewpoint for the present composition was most likely a spot on what is now the Quai Georges Pompidou although Leech could also have achieved the same vantage from a position on the Quai Bourbon on the Ile St Louis. In keeping with the painting practice he had developed in the previous decade, the present work was probably composed later from several smaller spontaneous studies executed directly sur le motif.

The dramatic high positioning of the bridge across the top of the picture plane undoubtedly owes its inspiration to Whistler, Leech's early artistic hero and to works such as Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Old Battersea Bridge (fig.1, 1872 - 7, Tate Collection, London), themselves inspired by the oblique perspectival arrangements seen in Japanese prints of the period. After Whistler's death in 1905, memorial exhibitions were held in both London and Paris and it is highly likely that Leech visited both. Indeed, he even exhibited his own Nocturne at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 1907.

Whilst the compositional arrangement of the present work demonstrates clear parallels to Whistler, the handling shows a more marked Impressionist influence. Denise Ferran has specifically highlighted the similarities of the present work both in terms of handling and composition to Monet's Les Dechargeurs de Charbon (1875, Musée d'Orsay, Paris). The confident application of the vibrantly impastoed brushstrokes capturing the reverberating light off the water most certainly demonstrate Leech's first hand knowledge and understanding of Impressionist principles.