BENJAMIN WILLIAMS LEADER (WORCESTER 1831-1923 SURREY)

This spectacular view by Leader is similar in scale to A Quiet Valley among the Welsh Hills (1860, Worcester City Museums) and A Fine Autumn Day, North Wales (1866, Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery). The painting illustrates a solitary walker and his dog making their way across gorse and heather-cloaked terrain, beside a vast mountain lake. Leader has suffused the composition with peaceful grandeur, the still water reflecting the mountain range beyond and the billowing clouds above. North Wales was a favourite sketching ground for Leader. He visited it almost every summer from the late 1850s until 1889: ‘The scenes of these studies he has found in England, Wales, and Switzerland, are as varied in character as they are conscientious and masterly in execution. The various aspects of morning, noon, and night, have all been carefully noted’ (The Art Journal, 1879, p. 13).