Benjamin Williams Leader (1831-1923)
A View of Frog Lane
Oil on canvas
16 ½ x 15 inches
£8,500
Provenance
Mr Carden (a Worcester surgeon)
Exhibitions
Worcester Society of Arts, 1854
Literature
Ruth Wood, Benjamin Williams Leader, 1998, Antique Collectors’ Club, Suffolk, p 16;
Illustrated Art Annual 1901, p 15.
This early work, a collaboration with his student friend Edward Thompson Davis, is probably Leader’s first exhibited painting (Worcester Society of Arts, 1854). Leader met Davis when they were both pupils at the Worcester School of Design. Davis would paint the faces whilst Leader painted the rest. The view is a cobbled street behind Diglis House in Worcester, where Leader lived.