Richard Hayley Lever
American, 1876-1958
High Tide at Dieppe, 1902
Signed Hayley Lever (lr)
Oil on canvas
10 1/4 x 12 1/8 inches
Born in Adelaide, Australia, Hayley Lever demonstrated artistic ability at an early age. Traveling to England in 1893 to study art, in 1900 he moved to the artists" colony of St. Ives, in Cornwall, studying painting with Julius Olsson and Algernon Talmage, and painting impressionistic views of the town and harbor that established his reputation in England. Over the next decade, he also made excursions to coastal locales in France, such as Dieppe, Honfleur and Concarneau, painting marine subjects such as the present work.
Invited to exhibit at the Carnegie International Exposition in Pittsburgh in 1910, Lever submitted a St. Ives subject. Critics praised his sense of design, and his ability to evoke a sense of place. Around 1912, at the suggestion of American artists including Gardner Symons and Ernest Lawson, Lever traveled to New York; he spent the remainde