Benjamin Williams Leader Paintings

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Benjamin Williams Leader Biography

English Naturalist artist
born 1831 - died 1923

Worcestershire's leading artistic son. Leader was born Benjamin Leader Williams in Diglis in Worcester City in March 1831. His father was involved in the management of traffic on the River Severn, in those days before Great Britain developed the obsession with road transport, which has ultimately proved so mistaken. Williams senior knew and was a great admirer of John Constable, and himself was a keen amateur artist.

Benjamin Leader Williams changed his name to Williams Leader, to distinguish himself from the legion of artists called Williams.

He attended the Royal Grammar School in the city, and studied in the evenings at Worcester School of Design. In 1854, following a number of years working for his father ( a mistake the writer made too), Benjamin Williams Leader enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools. During his first year at the RA Schools, Leader had a painting in the Summer Exhibition, and, more importantly, sold it.

From the outset his interest was in landscapes, early Benjamin Williams Leader painting, in it's detailed painting and bright colours showing the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites. Later in his career the artist gradually changed to a looser, less detailed style of painting. Unusually for the time Benjamin Williams Leader painted out of doors, if only at the initial stages of work on Benjamin Williams Leader art.

He married, in 1876, Mary Eastlake a niece of Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, President of the Royal Academy in the mid 19th century. In 1883 Benjamin Williams Leader artist became ARA, and in 1898, at the age of sixty- seven a full Academician. In 1888 Benjamin Williams Leader had moved to Surrey, then a beautiful county close to London, and as a result much favored by painters. Leader was masterly at painting winter scenes, with bare trees, and an atmosphere of bleakness, and cold the viewer can almost feel. Most famous Benjamin Williams Leader painting of this type is February Fill-Dyke, now in Birmingham Art Gallery. In 1914 the painter became a Freeman of the City of Worcester. The painter exhibited three Benjamin Williams Leader paintings at the RA in 1922, at the age of ninety-one years, an indefatigable worker to the last.

The dead artist was the son of Mr E Leader Williams, and his education was received at the Royal Grammar School Worcester, the Worcester School of Design, and the Royal Academy Schools. Benjamin Williams Leader was a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. The Freedom of the City of Worcester was conferred on him in 1914.

Mr Leader once confessed that Benjamin Williams Leader artist had never had any satisfaction to equal that of the sale of first Benjamin Williams Leader art Cottage Children Blowing Bubbles. Perhaps one reason for that feeling was that it meant his father giving his consent to enable him to follow art as a career, and in that way it practically decided the whole of his future life.

From the point of view of the public, however, his first success was with February Fill Dyke. It attracted a good deal of attention at the RA, and the Chantry Fund wanted it, but it was already sold, and the buyer refused to part with it.

He was particularly careful to gain an effective sky-line with his groups of trees arranged nearly always on a pyramidical plan, so that the largest shapes were near the place Benjamin Williams Leader intended to be the focus of sight, according to the distance at which they were intended to stand in the landscape. This general scheme is well exemplified in the Benjamin Williams Leader paintings already named, and in The Ploughman homeward plods his weary way, and in the Worcester Cathedral, under the shadow of which almost Benjamin Williams Leader artist was born. In the later case the Cathedral tower is the apex of the sky- line. Benjamin Williams Leader was fond of the reflections of the evening sky upon water, and if no river was at hand the wet ruts in a flooded field would serve the purpose of carrying the light of the sky to the foreground.