Early 1900s Art

Signed lower right: Hayley Lever; on stretcher bar: 1876–Hayley Lever–1958 / RWA R.A. NA

Hayley Lever (1876 - 1958) Concarneau, Brittany, France, 1905 Oil on panel 6 3/4 x 9 1/2 inches Signed by the artist lower left Inscribed by another hand on the reverse Provenance: Clayton-Liberatore Galleries, Bridgehampton, New York Hayley Lever’s (1875-1958) versatility has worked against his posthumous reputation. He was never associated with a single artistic movement, instead producing impressionist, post-impressionist, and expressionist works. While best known as a painter of post-impressionist marine scenes, his subject matter included landscapes, urban scenes, and still lifes across his 60-year career. This lack of a singular style or subject has given him an amorphous place in U.S. art history despite his obvious accomplishments. [Richard] Hayley Lever was born in Bowden, South Australia in 1875. He excelled in painting classes at Prince Alfred College (1883-91) and Norwood Art School (1891-93) in Adelaide. In the 1890s, Lever moved to England, studying art in London and painting at St. Ives, a fishing port and popular artistic colony on the Cornish coast. In St. Ives, Lever shared a studio with Frederick Waugh, and studied painting with Albert Julius Olsson and Algernon Talmage. Lever was a plein air painter particularly interested in the effect of sunlight on the sea. He painted in a distinctive style, strongly influenced by the works of Vincent van Gogh, that might now be called post-impressionism. He used a limited palette to paint the St. Ives harbor, particularly at dusk or in the moonlight. His strong contrasting colors and thick use of paint created a crisp and physical surface that earned him acclaim in Europe. Lever’s many St. Ives seascapes are among his most popular works. In 2017, his painting entitled “The Old Lighthouse and Fleets of St. Ives” sold at auction for $162,500. In 1912, Lever moved to New York to test the art market in the United States. In Manhattan, Lever met prominent U.S. painters such as Ernest Lawson, Robert Henri, William Glackens, John Sloan, and George Bellows. Lever exhibited with this group regularly in New York City, painting parks, streets, bridges and the Manhattan waterfront. However, he soon discovered the scenic potential of Gloucester, Rockport, and Marblehead in the Cape Ann area of Massachusetts...

An early 20th-century Hayley Lever watercolor depicting fishing boats docked at the St. Ives Harbor, Cornwall, England. A fine, spontaneous rendering on watercolor paper, in the orig...

Hailey Lever 'Hyde Park, London, England, 1904', watercolor, 1904. Signed 'HL' in pencil, lower right. Titled and dated in pencil, in the bottom left margin....

Jim's of Lambertville is proud to offer this artwork by Hayley Lever (1875 – 1958) Born in Adelaide, Australia in 1875, Richard Hayley Lever was best known for his paintings that sy...

Hayley Lever, 'After the Storm' (gallery title), also 'Sunny Afternoon', watercolor on watercolor paper, the full sheet, the image extending to the sheet edges; in very good conditio...

A turn of the century view of the town of St. Austrell, Cornwall, in the morning mist of southern England. A beautifully subtle work, in muted earth tones, on buff wove drawing paper...

An outstanding oil painting executed with thick use of paint capturing a luminous sight of the Locks at Devon England with the speckling water glistening...

Born in Adelaide, Australia, Hayley Lever was known for his town-shore landscapes and still-life painting in a style that combined impressionism with vivid colors and strong lines of...