Percy Leason (1889-1959)

PERCY LEASON (1889-1959) Percy Alexander Leason was an Australian artist who was a major figure in the Australian tonalist movement. Percy was born on 23 February 1889 in rural Victoria, from a large family of famers, he was expected to carry on the family tradition of wheat farming or saddlery making, however, in his early adolescent years he demonstrated an interest in drawing. After attending art school at Nhill, Percy was apprenticed to Sands & McDougall in Melbourne as a lithographic artist in 1906. He soon transferred to the art department where he did illustrations for jam tin labels and department store advertisements. His first major illustration was a poster for Carlton Brewery in Melbourne of Sam Griffin, an itinerant miner, standing at a bar with a full pint, the caption of the poster “I allus has wan at Eleven”, became a famous trademark for Foster beer. During these years he studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School under the tutelage of Bernard Hall and Frederick McCubbin, upon completing his apprenticeship he began a somewhat bohemian lifestyle. Leason commenced his illustration career in 1914, later serving on the staff of the Sydney Bulletin as political cartoonist, at this time his career as a commercial painter was expanding as well, with artworks of Gallipoli and the Sturt expedition being bought by the War Memorial Museum in Canberra, and the National Library of Australia in Canberra respectively. He joined the Sydney Society of Artists and the Painters and Etchers Society, in 1918 his paintings and etchings were purchased by The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, and at that time he was the highest paid commercial artist in Australia. In 1916 he had met Max Meldrum who had returned from France and expressed his ideas of tonal analysis. When Leason moved back to Melbourne from Sydney in 1924, the two men bonded their ideas and cemented the style of tonalism they both would follow for the rest of their lives. Towards the end of the 1930s Leason became concerned with the dwindling prospects of continued employment as a commercial artist, and decided that his chances for continued success were better in the United States. He emigrated in 1938, his wife and six children following the year after, and began his career in New York doing commercial illustration with pen and ink, recognizing the opportunity to spread the word about tonal painting, he established his first painting school in New York City in 1941, and continued it on Staten Island until 1957. During these years he painted many landscapes and studios studies, most of which are in the collection of the Castlemaine Art Gallery and the State Library. In 1957 he travelled with his wife Isabel to France and England, where he painted several tonal studies of Paris and the countryside of the Dordogne region which he visited in particular to justify his theory of cave art. In 1959 he died on Staten Island New York, following his death two retrospective exhibitions were held at the Staten Island Institute and at the Salmagundi Club, New York. Percy Leason’s constant questioning of tonal technique as an ideal and his works he left are his legacy and his continuance..

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