Charles Robert Leslie
| Charles R. Leslie | |
|---|---|
Self-portrait (1814; National Portrait Gallery, London)
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| Born |
19 October 1794 London |
| Died | 5 May 1859 (aged 64) |
| Nationality | British |
| Known for | Genre Oil Painting |
Charles Robert Leslie RA (19 October 1794 – 5 May 1859) was an English genre painter.
Leslie was born in London to American parents. When he was five years of age he returned with them to the United States, where they settled in Philadelphia. Leslie complted his education and afterwards became apprenticed to a bookseller. He was, however, mainly interested in painting and drama, and when George Frederick Cooke visited the city he executed a portrait of the actor from recollection of him on the stage, which was considered a work of such promise that a fund was raised to enable the young artist to study in Europe.
He left for London in 1811, bearing introductions which procured for him the friendship of West, Beechey, Allston, Coleridge and Washington Irving, being admitted as a student of the Royal Academy, where he carried off two silver medals. At first, influenced by West and Fuseli, he essayed high art, and his earliest important subject depicted Saul and the Witch of Endor; but he soon discovered his true aptitude and became a painter of cabinet-pictures, dealing, not like those of David Wilkie, with the contemporary life that surrounded him, but with scenes from the great masters of fiction, from Shakespeare and Cervantes, Addison and Molière, Swift, Sterne, Fielding and Smollett.
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