6215

DESTROYED

Captain John Cecil Gerard Leigh 1914

Half-length slightly to the left and full-face looking to the viewer, wearing service dress

Oil [support and dimensions unknown]

Inscribed lower right: P. A. de László / 1914. XI.   

Inscribed lower left: J. Gerard Leigh  

Laib L7573 (788) / C15 (13)  Captain Lee [sic]

Sitters’ Book I, opp. f. 101: J.C. Gerard Leigh. Nov. 23. 1914

The present portrait was painted not long after the First World War began, at a time when the sitter was serving in the army with the First Life Guards. In 1916, de László painted a full-length portrait of the sitter’s wife, Helen [6222], for which a portrait sketch was painted in 1915 [6217]. The artist made another portrait of her, undated, in a cornfield, which was destroyed by fire at the same time as the present portrait while in storage in Leicestershire.

John Cecil Gerard Leigh was born on 25 October 1886, the son of the late Captain Henry Gerard Leigh (died 1900) of Luton Hoo, Bedfordshire, and Marion Lindsay Antrobus (died 1927), daughter of Hugh Lindsay Antrobus, of Lower Cheam, Surrey.^[1] He was educated at Eton College, and at Sandhurst. Like his father, he made a career in the army. On 10 December 1913, in London at St. George’s Church, Hanover Square, he married Helen Goudy of Chicago, the daughter of William Judd Goudy and Carolyn Walker. His best man, a brother officer, was George Butler, and it was noted at the time in the press that “prior to the wedding, Gerard Leigh had already given to his bride ‘magnificent pearls, diamonds, emeralds, and sapphires, and a set of wonderful Russian sables.’ The couple spent their honeymoon in the south of France.”^[2] The couple lived at Grove Park, Bracknell, Northamptonshire, and there were three children of the marriage: (William Henry) Gerard (born 1915), Mary Catherine (born 1917), and Margaret Carolyn (born 1919).

Aside from his career in the army, the sitter was also a member of London County Council in the 1920s, and later Welfare Officer for Leicestershire from 1940 until 1956. A country man, the sitter was a keen rider to hounds, and a member of the Quorn and Belvoir hunts. His country home was Thorpe Satchville Hall, Melton Mowbray, in Leicestershire. The sitter died at his London home in December 1967.

CC & MD 2008