Paintings by Michael Leonard

Born in Bangladore, India, in 1933, Michael Leonard studied graphic design and illustration at St Martin’s School of Art, London, from 1954 to 1957, after which he worked as an illustrator. His first exhibition as a painter was in 1972

Leonard achieves great realism with flesh-colored tones and evokes a sensuality of the human figure, recalling Leonardo’s painting, achieving a new classic style of the nude. The contrast between the tonal range in the oil paintings with the initial drawings, which served as studies of finished and detailed pencil figures for the paintings, reveals Leonard’s virtuosity as the leading international painter of figurative art today.

Leonard’s works are in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in Lon, the National Portrait Gallery in London, the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Boymans van Beumingen Museum in Rotterdam, to name a few. It has also been the subject of several monographs, written by critics Lincoln Kirstein and Edward Lucie-Smith, and is cited in numerous articles, magazines, anthologies, and catalogs. Michael Leonard currently lives in London.

Insert Image: Michael Leonard, Untitled, 1997, Illustration for “The Joy of Gay Sex”, Colored Pencil on Paper