Patrick Leonard

Patrick Leonard studied under Seán Keating and Maurice MacGonigal at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin. From 1941, he exhibited regularly at the Royal Hibernian Academy, which made him an Honorary Member in 1983. His teacher Keating also opened Leonard’s first solo exhibition in 1944. From 1953-82 Leonard worked as an art teacher in Dublin. Periods of illness repeatedly interrupted his artistic and teaching activities. In 1990, the Gorry Gallery organized a comprehensive retrospective.

Leonard painted mostly realistic rural genre scenes. He was known for constantly making sketches, which he later turned into oil paintings. An oil painting was also Ladies’ Singles, which he showed in Helsinki in 1952. He later painted it over and used the other side of the canvas again for the painting After the Storm - the End of a Coaster (oil on canvas, 99.5 x 115 cm). Until its recent discovery, Ladies’ Singles was considered destroyed, as the artist claimed.