Australian born, Richard Hayley Lever came to America in 1911 and was soon counted among the most widely exhibited artists in New York City. He was a painter of street scenes, landscapes and floral still lifes. Though stylistically influenced by the French Impressionists, Lever’s subject matter was to become distinctly American.
Born in Bowden, South Australia, Lever showed a strong interest in painting at an early age. In 1899, a family inheritance financed Lever’s travels to England, where he spent time painting in St. Ives, a fishing port and artistic colony on the Cornish coast. There, he shared a studio with Frederick Waugh and studied painting techniques under the Impressionists Olsson and Algernon Talmage. He also painted scenes while in the French port villages of Douarnenez and Concarneau, Brittany, directly across the English Channel. In 1911, Ernest Lawson, an Impressionist painter and one of “The Eight”, persuaded Lever to emigrate to the United States where the artist spent the remainder of his life. From 1919 to 1931, he taught at the Art Students League of New York and exhibited regularly with Lawson’s circle of artists, Robert Henri, William Glackens, John Sloan and George Bellows. After spending several summers painting coastal landscapes in Gloucester and Marblehead, Lever moved to Massachusetts permanently to live and continue his studio practice.
Deeply influenced by Vincent van Gogh, Lever combined Impressionist brushwork, a palette of vivid colors, and the defined lines of Realism. In 1930, he relocated to Caldwell, New Jersey and then to Mount Vernon in 1938, where he continued to paint and teach. Lever offered the following words of inspiration to his students:
“Art is the re-creation of mood in line, form and color. If I were confined to my own backyard for the rest of my life, I’d still have more pictures in my mind than I would have time to paint. Art is nothing but having a good time”.
Richard Hayley Lever received many awards and critical acclaim during his lifetime, and he is represented in major American museums, including in New York at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in Washington, D.C. at the Phillips Collection and Corcoran Gallery of Art.
