Christopher Wood is a wonderful author of numerous art related books such as 'Victorian Painters'; The Dictionary of Victorian Painters' and 'Victorian Painting'. These are but a few of the books he has written. Please click here to visit our bookstore and place your order with 'Hayden & Fandetta' A Fine and Rare Bookstore.
B. W. Leader was one of the longest-lived and most prolific of all Victorian landscape painters, and one of the best. His work runs the whole gamut of 19th century styles, from Pre-Raphaelite to Impressionist, via Barbizon along the way. Above all he was a realist, and a naturalist, and saw himself as following in the footsteps of John Constable. 
Leader shows us the English countryside at the last great moment of its unspoiled glory, before the advent of the car, the railway, and modern farming. He loved every aspect of it, the fields, hedges, woods, roads, rivers and villages. Few English artists have painted sunny hayfields and cornfields better than Leader. He even liked the rain, and has left us the wettest picture in English art, February Filldyke.
Leader shows us the English countryside at the last great moment of its unspoiled glory, before the advent of the car, the railway, and modern farming. He loved every aspect of it, the fields, hedges, woods, roads, rivers and villages. Few English artists have painted sunny hayfields and cornfields better than Leader. He even liked the rain, and has left us the wettest picture in English art, February Filldyke. Although a realist, there was a romantic side to Leader as well. He was particularly fond of sunsets, and his glowing red evening skies are more reminiscent of Turner, Linnell and Palmer. He also loved old buildings, especially manor-houses, cottages and churches, and painted them with obvious passion. He was an indefatigable sketcher, and I personally prefer his many informal close-up studies of landscape and rocks. I was therefore delighted to hear of the Cambridge Art Gallery’s Leader exhibition, which will, I hope, spread his fame wider in the USA.
