B. W. LEADER, A.R.A.
Born 1831.
R. BENJAMIN WILLIAMS LEADER, son of the late Mr. E. Leader Williams, C.E., was born at Worcester, and received his earliest instruction in art at the School of Design in that city. At twenty-three he was admitted as a student in the Royal Academy, and in the same year exhibited his first picture, "Cottage Children Blowing Bubbles," which was bought by an American connoisseur for £80. Two years later he visited Scotland for the first time, since which he has become one of the most popular delineators of mountain scenery, Wales and Switzerland, as well as the Highlands, being his favourite sketching-grounds. His pictures, of which the subjects are most frequently the wild mountain pass, the common, and the lake, are often darkened with the shadows of evening or of the thunder cloud, or are dyed with all the colours of the setting sun. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1883, and has been an annual exhibitor ever since 1856. Among his most important works may be mentioned "A Moated Grange," 1868; "The Streams through the Birch Wood," 1871; "Wild Waters," 1875; "The Last Gleam," 1879; "February Fill-dyke," 1881; "With Verdure Clad," 1886, his largest picture. In the present Royal Academy, "A Surrey Sand-pit" and "Conway Bay" are excellent examples of his powers.
