This self portrait by artist, illustrator and cartoonist Percy Leason is characteristic of the Australian tonalist painting movement: a murky brown palette and a tonal stepping out of light and shade. Leason completed an apprenticeship as a lithographic artist in Melbourne, making illustrations for advertisements before turning to book illustration. He also attended night classes at the National Gallery School. After moving to Sydney in 1917, Leason’s paintings and etchings were purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales and he became a political cartoonist at the Bulletin. Perturbed by the ‘new wave’ of modernism sweeping Sydney, he returned to Melbourne in 1924, building a house in Eltham which became a hub for artists, writers and performers. Australia’s highest-paid cartoonist at that time, his political cartoons appeared in Punch, Table Talk and the Bulletin. In 1938 Leason moved to the USA and settled in Staten Island, New York, where he established an art school, conducting art classes in realist tonal painting.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of Anton Cook 2009
© Estate of Percy Leason
Percy Leason (age 41 in 1930)
Anton Cook (1 portrait)
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Drawn from the National Portrait Gallery collection, this salon-style hang references the lavish 18th- and 19th-century European salons where paintings were hung floor-to-ceiling.
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