Artists – L

Labruzzi, the son of a weaver, studied at, and was later received into, the prestigious Accademia di San Luca, one of the few Italians in Rome who worked mainly as a landscape artist. His studio was one of those usually visited by British Grand Tourists and his work enjoyed contemporary popularity and commercial success.He accompanied the antiquarian Sir Richard Colt Hoare (1758-1838), of Stourhead in Wiltshire, along the Via Appia from Rome to Brindisi in 1789, commissioned to sketch the monuments along the way. Bad weather and Labruzzi’s ill-health stopped the trip however, and the project was never completed, but he drew over two hundred and fifty views. His patron had intended to publish an account of the journey with prints and had the drawings bound in five volumes. Labruzzi made some more finished drawings in sepia, some modified for reproduction, and twenty-four plates etched by him were issued by Colt Hoare as 'Via Appia illustrate ab Urbe Romam ad Capuam', published in 1794 (see Timothy Clifford, 'Carlo Labruzzi the Grand Tour', 2012, Dickinson exhibition catalogue).

Henry Lamb was born in Adelaide, Australia in 1883, shortly before his father moved the family to Manchester, where he spent his childhood. He studied medicine before abandoning this path to be an artist. At twenty-two he left for London to study under Augustus John and William Orpen at their Chelsea Art School.John was a particularly formative influence and Lamb moved to Paris with him a few years later. Lamb spent a couple of summers on the south coast of Brittany, in search of a more traditional way of life. This impulse drew Lamb to Gola Island in Northern Ireland two years later.In London in 1905, Lamb joined the Fitzroy Street Group and was a founding member of both the Camden Town Group and the London Group. He married Nina Forrest, or Euphemia, in 1906 but the marriage proved short-lived. He was friendly with the Bloomsbury Group, having known Vanessa Stephen and Clive Bell from his early days in London, but he often had little patience with them. He was close friends with the eminent critic and biographer Lytton Strachey and between 1912 and 1914 he painted his portrait, now held in the Tate and one of his greatest works.In the First World War, Lamb served as a doctor in the Royal Army Medical Corps in France, Salonika and Palestine; he was awarded the Military Cross. He was not an official war artist but drew extensively and the resulting oils are an important part of his oeuvre.In 1928 he married Lady Pansy Pakenham and moved to Coombe Bissett in Wiltshire. Lamb was appointed an official war artist for the Second World War, making portraits of soldiers and studies of servicemen at work across the South of England. Lamb was elected as an associate of the Royal Academy and a Trustee of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate at this time. He was finally awarded full membership of the Royal Academy in 1949.Interest in Lamb’s work has revived in recent years, and he has been the subject of recent exhibitions at Salisbury Museum and Poole Museum. His work can be found in many collections around the world, including the Tate, the Imperial War Museum, the Government Art Collection and the National Gallery of Canada.

Samuel John Birch was born in Egremont, Cheshire. Apart from a brief period of study at the Atelier Colarossi, Paris in 1895, he was largely self-taught as an artist. Birch first visited West Cornwall in the late 1880s and settled in the Lamorna Valley in 1892. The place was to provide his inspiration for the rest of his life. He adopted the epithet ‘Lamorna’ in 1895 to distinguish himself from fellow artist Lionel Birch. He is regarded as the father figure of the later group of ‘Newlyn’ artists, which included Laura and Harold Knight, Alfred Munnings and Stanley Gardiner, known as the Lamorna group.Birch was elected as an Associate of the Royal Academy (ARA) in 1924 and was made a full Royal Academician (RA) eight years later. In his long and distinguished career, he exhibited over 200 works at the Royal Academy, as well as exhibiting throughout the country and abroad. Additional InformationTatePenlee House

The artist was a prominent English painter and sculptor, best known for his exceptional animal paintings and sculptures. His work significantly influenced Victorian art and culture and he was one of Queen Victoria’s favourite artists. The son of the engraver John Landseer, the artist showed early talent and was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools at the age of 13. Landseer quickly established himself with finely observed animal studies which exhibit technical precision as well as a deep understanding of character and narrative. His skill in portraying dogs, horses, stags and other wildlife earned him widespread acclaim and contemporary success.Landseer’s paintings are celebrated for their combination of naturalistic detail and emotive storytelling. Famous pictures such as ‘The Monarch of the Glen’ (1851) and ‘Laying Down The Law’ (1840) exhibit his skill at giving animals a sense of dignity, intelligence and moral presence. He also exhibited a remarkable facility for rendering the subtleties of light and texture, from the sheen of a dog’s coat to the atmospheric drama of the Scottish Highlands. Landseer also made sculpture, most famously the lion figures at the base of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, London. Knighted in 1850, his influence has been profound notably in the depiction of animals in art.Additional InformationYale Center for British ArtTateNational Gallery of Art

Laporte was a drawing master who exhibited work at the Royal Academy and British Institution from 1779. Dr Thomas Monro was one of his pupils. He published several manuals on landscape watercolour painting, the most famous of which 'The Progress of a Water-Coloured Drawing', c. 1802, went into several editions. It showed fourteen stages in the outline and colouring of a watercolour. He visited the Lakes in the 1790s and there are a number of drawings by him in the collection of The Wordsworth Trust, of which several are of Derwentwater. His work can also be found in the collections of the Tate, the British Museum and the Whitworth Art Gallery.

Click here for the latest catalogueFor many years after his death in 1888, Edward Lear’s reputation rested on his extraordinary poetry. Featuring magical creatures such as the Dong with a luminous nose, the Pobble who lost his toes, the pair of sailors in the beautiful pea-green boat and his brilliant limericks, his work earned him his place in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. Today, however, we recognise his artistic achievements as well, and over the years the many exhibitions of his ornithological art and landscapes have cemented his well-deserved reputation as an artist of the first rank.Lear’s quirky early drawings of birds exhibit the humour found in his verse. In 1837, with financial assistance from his patron, Lord Derby (1775 -1851), the twenty-five-year-old Lear set off for Rome. He remained based there for the following decade, a formative phase of his artistic development. The influence of the artist James Duffield Harding (1798 – 1863), whose drawing manuals Lear owned, can be seen in his pencil and chalk drawings. During the summer months, Lear would travel to other parts of Italy. In the winter, he would return to Rome and sell his work to British residents and visitors to the city.Lear’s travel watercolours, often extensively inscribed, frequently with nonsense writing, which he used extensively for reference for his oils and more finished watercolours are very popular today. Lear made a clear distinction between them and his more finished studio work. While they are unsigned, they are invariably dated and numbered, often with the time of execution recorded, as well as detailed colour notes and other inscriptions.Lear’s style of travel was leisurely, but he concentrated intensely and drew quickly during his working periods, usually first thing in the morning and in the evening. Some works were drawn in a matter of minutes, others, usually on larger sheets, would take him a few hours of an evening. He numbered the drawings in sequence as he went along. He added colour washes once he was back at home, following his colour notes made on the spot, and pen and ink inscriptions are frequently superimposed over the original pencil comments. Lear’s landscapes are invariably topographically accurate, but his poetic handling, which transcends representation, makes his work so appealing. His phrase ‘poetical topography’ aptly describes his watercolours and perhaps underscores the noticeable confidence of his working drawings. Lear greatly admired Lord Byron (1788 - 1824) as a child, as a result of which he had been fascinated by Greece from an early age. He wrote to his friend Chichester Fortescue before he first set out for Greece that, ‘I cannot but think that Greece has been most imperfectly illustrated… the vast yet beautifully simple sweeping lines of the hills have hardly been represented I fancy – nor the primitive dry foregrounds of Elgin marble peasants &c. What do you think of a huge work (if I can do all Greece)?’ (26.viii.48 MS, Somerset Record Office, Taunton). Lear travelled with Charles Church on his first trip to Greece in June and July 1848. While he travelled all over Greece from 1848 – 1864, drawing extensively, he never made a comprehensive record of the entire country. By 1853, Lear was on his way to Egypt. Lear’s last trip (1873 - 1875) was to India, at the invitation of his friend and patron, Lord Northbrook (1826 – 1904), who served as Viceroy from 1872 to 1876. This was the longest journey Lear ever undertook and he was overwhelmed by the colour and vitality of everything he saw in India. In 1870, Lear built a house in San Remo on the Italian Riviera, where he lived with Giorgio, his devoted manservant and travelling companion, after his return from India until his death in 1888. It was in this period that he wrote his greatest nonsense poetry and conceived of the Dong, the Pobble, the Jumblies and the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.

The artist was born in Barnstaple, Devon and joined the Royal Academy Schools in 1818. He lived in Kent for a while before returning to Devon in the 1840s, having been elected a Royal Academician in 1838. Nature was his enduring inspiration and he enjoyed considerable commercial success in his own lifetime. The extensive use of gum arabic by the artist in this work creates the effect of an intense greenwood which makes an interesting comparison with the oils on paper in this catalogue.Lee collaborated with contemporaries such as Sir Edwin Landseer (1802-1873) and Thomas Sidney Cooper (1803-1902), providing the backgrounds for paintings in which they painted the figures or animals.Burnham Beeches in Buckinghamshire is an historic area of largely beech and oak woodland which has been regularly pollarded, with many trees which are several hundreds of years old. An area of outstanding natural beauty, the woods were popular with nineteenth century artists.

Alphonse Legros was a painter, sculptor and etcher. Legros was born in Dijon, studied at the local art school and spent his early career in Paris where he attended the drawing-school of Lecoq de Boisbaudran. From 1855-7 Legros attended the evening classes at the École des Beaux-Arts. Legros was encouraged by Whistler to come to London in 1863 and married Frances Hodgson the following year. He naturalised in 1881.He was Professor of Fine Art at the Slade from 1875-1892, where his insistence on the quality of line laid the foundation for the Slade tradition of fine draughtsmanship. He set out to broaden the syllabus, introducing etching and, in 1884, classes in medal making. He was elected a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers (RE) in 1880 and an Honorary member of the Royal Scottish Academy (HRSA) in 1911.He is known for his powerful portrait drawings and delicate etchings.His work was exhibited at the Paris Salon, with the Society of Twelve and at the RA and RE and can be found in the collection of the British Museum, the V&A, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and the Museum of Dijon.Additional InformationArt UKVictorian Web

The son of a London engraver and painter Frederick Christian Lewis, he started his career as an animal painter together with Edwin Landseer. Elected an associate of the OWCS in 1827 and a full member in 1830 Lewis stopped working in oils and worked in watercolour and bodycolour until the late 1850s.He travelled extensively throughout his career; his first journey was through Switzerland to Venice in 1827. In 1830-2 he was in Spain and Morocco, which resulted in the publication of the lithographs 'Lewis’s Sketches and Drawings of the Alhambra' (1835) and Lewis’s 'Sketches of Spain and Spanish Character' (1836). This led to his sobriquet ‘Spanish ‘ Lewis. His watercolours of Spain are powerful and highly coloured.In 1837 he left England, travelled through Italy, Greece and Turkey arriving in Cairo in 1841 where he lived for the next ten years. His detailed and vivid Orientalist work was hugely popular and he exhibited it at the OWCS throughout the 1850s. He took up oil painting again around 1858. He was elected ARA in 1859 and RA in 1865.His work can be found in all major drawings collections.Additional InformationTateRoyal AcademyArt UKNational Galleries