Medium/Discipline: Painting, Works on Paper
Birthplace: Jersey City, New Jersey
Place of Death: Monkton, Maryland
Maryland Affiliation: Depicts Maryland subjects, Active while in residence
Prominent Theme: Landscapes; American Scene painting
Style/Period: Abstract Expressionism
Places of Residence: New Jersey; New York City; New Canaan, Connecticut; Salisbury, Connecticut; Louisville, Kentucky; Garrison, Maryland; Monkton, Maryland
Gender: Male
Race/Ethnicity: White
Biography: Eugene "Bud" Leake, a resident of Garrison and Monkton, Maryland from 1961 until his death in 2005, was at once a quintessential Maryland landscape artist and a visionary leader in arts higher education. At the age of eight, Eugene Leake was exposed to the landscape painting of French Barbizon master Jean-François Millet (1814-1875) through books, and soon began drawing in efforts to emulate his work. In addition, Leake grew up in New Jersey near the Montclair Art Museum which had a number of George Inness (1825-1894) landscape paintings that inspired Leake because Inness painted the local area.
In his watercolors and paintings, Eugene Leake produced broad, expressive landscape compositions that display his keen awareness of the infinite variety and fleeting aspects of nature (Exhibition label, The Baltimore Museum of Art, 2002). His landscapes seem to hover on the brink of change: clouds ready to shift, a patch of light about to slip into shadow, a breeze poised to blur the reflection on the surface of a pond. Key to his painting is a profound understanding and admiration for artists from the past, particularly the 19th Century French Barbizon painters such as Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875) and Theodore Rousseau (1812-1867). Leake depicted a sense of place and a moment in time in nature, which was the interest of the Barbizon "plein air" painters as well. "Plein air" refers to a painting done outside rather than in a studio, and is derived from the French term en plein air meaning "in the open air." Of Maryland's landscapes, he said, "Maybe I like this Maryland country so much because it reminds me at various times of Constable or Corot or Hopper...There's a quietness and a gentleness to Maryland that is like the English landscape. It gets a little heavy here in the summer, with the yellow skies and hot days. But we may be missing the boat by not painting more of that." (Craig Hankin, Maryland Landscapes of Eugene Leake, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1986, p. 3)
In 1939, Leake got married to Nora Bullitt from Louisville, Kentucky, where he lived for many years and during which time he served in the Navy during World War II. While in the service, he produced a number of watercolors that caught the eye of influential Vanity Fair editor Frank Crowninshield, who showed and sold nearly all of them. In Louisville after returning from service, Leake became a life drawing instructor and eventually director of the Art Center Association of Louisville. During evenings and weekends in Kentucky, and while on summer vacations in Maine, Leake continued to produce landscapes of his surroundings.
In 1959, Leake re-entered the Yale School of Art and Architecture that was pursuing a completely different curriculum under the direction of Josef Albers (1888-1976) than the school's Beaux Arts orientation that had frustrated Leake twenty years before. After working in the style of the abstract expressionists in a manner akin to the Color Field painters, Leake left the school with both a B.F.A. and M.F.A. Leake and his wife selected Baltimore as their new home given both its location on the eastern city corridor and Leake's opportunity to become college president of the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Eugene Leake, who resided in Garrison and Monkton, Maryland for more than 40 years, was president of the Maryland Institute's College of Art (MICA) for 13 years, from 1961 to 1974. With his leadership, the undergraduate school gained national renown, quadrupled its enrollment, tripled its faculty, doubled both its space and resources and established graduate programs including the Hoffberger School of Painting. The library grew from 5,400 volumes to 30,000, the budget increased ten-fold and the school earned national accreditation in 1967. Leake was responsible for bringing sculptors Norman Carlberg and Stephanie Scuris and painter-printmaker Peter Milton from Yale. He also hired abstract expressionist painter Grace Hartigan and sculptor Lila Katzen to the school as faculty members and brought in Clyfford Still as a visiting professor. He gave faculty the freedom to teach their subject and craft as they saw fit. Today MICA is considered among the four top art schools nationwide due in significant part to the changes Leake affected while MICA president.
Eugene Leake's career as a painter began to flourish at age 58. In 1969, he went to Spain where he was deeply affected by the contrast between the bright, bold colors of the expressionists in the U.S. and the grays, blacks and browns used in the prints of Goya and the paintings of Velazquez in the Prado museum in Madrid. He returned home inspired to pick up on his old love of painting landscapes in the outdoors. As Leake researcher Craig Hankin points out, Leake's esthetic awakening was accompanied by a change in technique: Leake returned to an earthy palette and working with five or six colors that he mixed to achieve the tones he desired. (Hankin, p. 17) He sometimes underpainted his canvases with a warm tone. Leake's landscapes are very often titled to give a sense of place or time, two characteristics vital to the conception and execution of his "plein air" painting: September Pasture with Horse; Pocock Meadow with December Sky; Deer Creek, Dark Day.
After retiring from MICA in 1974 and quickly realizing in the aftermath that he missed the students, that fall he became the first artist-in-residence at The Johns Hopkins University. Leake later established the Homewood Art Workshops, which are increasingly popular today and currently led by Craig Hankin, Leake biographer and scholar. Leake continued to be a role model for artists and arts educators until his death in 2005.
Eugene Leake's work has been shown widely, including at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Brooklyn Museum, the National Academy of Sciences and a 1994 exhibition at The Baltimore Museum of Art. His work is in the permanent collections of The Baltimore Museum of Art; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Filson Historical Society, Inc. in Louisville, Kentucky; the Owensboro Museum of Fine Art, Kentucky; J. B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky; University of Louisville, Kentucky; University of North Carolina, Greensboro; and the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts in Hagerstown, Maryland.
Education/Training: Yale School of Fine Arts (1930-1934); Art Students League, New York City; B.A. & M.F.A., Yale School of Art and Architecture (1959-1961); Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, California College of Arts and Crafts
Art-related Employment: art college president; art instructor; painter; watercolorist
Selected References: Dean, Mary A. [et al.] 350 Years of Art & Architecture in Maryland (College Park : Art Gallery, and Gallery of the School of Architecture, University of Maryland), 1984.
Exhibition label, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland Artists from the Collection, 1890-1970, April 24-October 27, 2002.
Hankin, Craig. Maryland Landscapes of Eugene Leake. (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press), 1986.
Other Publications: Gussow, Alan and John Driscoll. The Artist as Native: Reinventing Regionalism. (San Francisco, CA: Pomegranate Artbooks), 1993.
Maryland Institutions Holding Artworks: The Baltimore Museum of Art; The Historic Houses of The Johns Hopkins University; Homewood Art Workshops, The Johns Hopkins University (one painting on display at the Mattin Center, Morris W. Offit Building); The Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, Maryland
Single-Artist Exhibitions: partial list:
C. Grimaldis Gallery, 2000.
Green Mountain Gallery, New York.
Hamilton Gallery, Charleston, South Carolina.
Jacobs Ladder Gallery, Washington, D.C.
The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.
Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore.
National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.
Tatistcheff and Company, New York.
Towson University, Baltimore.
University of Louisville, Kentucky.
University of Kentucky, Lexington.
Walker Gallery, New York City, 1937.
York College, Pennsylvania.
Multiple-Artist Exhibitions: partial list:
Art Institute of Chicago.
Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi.
The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1994.
Brooklyn Museum.
Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio.
Cincinnati Museum of Art, Ohio.
Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York.
Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York.
Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, New Jersey.
M. Knoedler and Company, New York.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.
Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Owensboro Museum of Fine Art, Kentucky.
Betty Parsons Gallery, New York.
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia.
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania.
Artist Contact Information: Representative: C. Grimaldis Gallery, 523 N Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21201, Phone: 410.539.1080, Fax: 410.539.2229, E-mail: c.grimaldis@verizon.net
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