An important collection of art notebooks and related ephemera
Item #8309
An important collection of art notebooks and related ephemera created by the British artist Gerald Leet (1913-1998). Leet was an accomplished artist and teacher who became a War Artist and later "Artist to the Queen Mother." The collection includes scores of small watercolours mainly from the 1920's of people and scenes and both the image and the captions often providing a humorous insight. These early works cover the period when he was a student at Goldsmiths and later at the Royal College of Art. During WWII Leet spent much of his time in South Africa and Egypt and there are a number of very well crafted "architectural" style drawings and watercolours from this period. Later he came to the attention of Lord Wavell, Viceroy of India and it was Wavell who arranged his appointment as official war artist in New Delhi. It seems his strength as a "head and shoulder" craftsman was particularly important and most of the images from this period (all in a separate "notebook" ) are pen drawings of head and shoulder of Indian and other troops etc. . Denton Welch portrayed Leet (as Marcus Lynch) in his most famous novel "A Voice Through a Cloud". His work for the Queen later Queen Mother (sketches of her Staff) earned him temporary accommodation at Windsor Castle. Over 375 individual paintings or sketches, in 5 sketch books, generally very good.
Price: $4,000.00