William Lee Hankey - The Village Gossip 1900

Idealised rural village scenes were popular during Victorian times. William Lee Hankey here gives a little drama, with the young woman and child isolated from the main group. The title of the work invites the viewer to guess what they are saying about her.

During the early 1900s Hankey moved to France where he painted peasant subjects almost exclusively. He was influenced by the French artist Bastien-Lepage (1848-1884), who painted scenes of French peasant life in an idealised realist manner. Lee-Hankey was also a successful printmaker in the early 1900s, with many of his rural subjects being produced as prints.

Born in Chester, England, Hankey studied at the Chester School of Art, the Royal College of Art, South Kensington, and in Paris. Back in London he began exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1896. Lee Hankey was President of the Royal Sketch Club from 1902 to 1904. On active service during World War I, he served with the Artists’ Rifles in Flanders in 1915.

http://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/collection/objects/69-561/

William Lee-Hankey - Waiting for the Tide, Concarneau

Price Realized £8,963

signed 'William Lee-Hankey' (lower left), signed again and inscribed 'WAITING FOR THE TIDE - CONCARNEAU by W Lee-Hankey RWS HON ROI' (on the canvas-overlap)
oil on canvas
25 x 30 in. (63.5 x 76.2 cm.)

William Lee-Hankey

[A country girl with farm buildings beyond]
indistinctly signed (lower left)
oil on canvas
14 1/8 x 10 1/8 in.
Price Realized £5,400

[A peasant woman seated on a wall]
10 1/8 x 7 7/8"
oil on panel

[A mother with a child on her back]
signed 'W Lee Hankey' (lower right)
oil on panel
20½ x 16¼ in.
Price Realized £6,000

Finding the curriculum of the South Kensington Schools stifling, Lee-Hankey undertook his artistic education in Paris. Thus began a life-long attachment to France. He took much of his inspiration from the life led in the villages of Normandy and Brittany, and what the critic A.L. Baldry termed 'the picturesqueness, and the pathos of the peasants' struggle for existence'. The poetic depiction of mothers with their children found particular favour with contemporary audiences, and Lee-Hankey treated the subject often.

William Lee-Hankey

[Sisters]

[Halcyon Days]

.

1869 - 1952.

http://www.artnet.com/artist/10259/william-lee-hankey.html

including works currently for sale

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lee_Hankey

William Lee-Hankey - Peeling Vegetables

signed W LEE-HANKEY l.r.

oil on canvas

24 1/4 x 20"

William Lee Hankey - Carrying the corn

signed 'W LEE HANKEY' (lower right)
oil on canvas
51 x 61cm (20 1/16 x 24in).


Sold for £9,600 inclusive of Buyer's Premium

William Lee-Hankey - Portrait of a girl

oil on canvas
14 x 10 in.
Price Realized £2,400

http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?from=salesummary&pos=1&intObjectID=4827004&sid=069e7a5c-1b80-4e19-a40a-23175dcc26a3

William Lee Hankey - Poverty

William Lee Hankey - Open Air Market Scene

William Lee Hankey - We’ve Been In The Meadows All Day Circa 1904

http://christchurchartgallery.org.nz/collection/objects/69-310/