* ALEXANDER (ALEX) LECKIE (SCOTTISH 1932 - 2010),
DUNVEGAN CASTLE
watercolour on paper, signed and titled
image size 24.5cm x 34.5cm, overall size 43cm x 52cm
Mounted, framed and under glass.
Note: So far as we can determine, this is the first watercolour by Alex Leckie to be offered at auction. It is assumed that this work dates from around 1950.
Note 2: Alex Leckie’s name was inextricably linked to The Glasgow School of Art. It was where he had begun studying in 1950 when, as the then Academic Registrar (Sir) Harry Barnes would later recollect, he was admitted ‘by the back door’, having shown a great deal of promise but possessing none of the normal qualifications to gain entry. It is unsurprising that the young Alex Leckie didn’t take to the disciplines of the post-war British education system, given his rather idiosyncratic upbringing. His father was an ardent communist and political activist who, nonetheless, instilled an appreciation of the arts into his son. The Leckie household library was extensive, containing several thousand books, and there were visits to art galleries and museums where he developed his appreciation of the work of ancient cultures, echoes of which would be found in his own ceramics in later years. Leckie excelled at art school and was offered the chance to complete a Post-Graduate Diploma. In 1955, and in imminent danger of being called up for National Service, Leckie decided to move to Australia. Having relatives in South Australia he settled in Adelaide where he soon found employment throwing garden pots at Bennetts Magill Pottery, a job which he would later describe as providing ‘good discipline’. Enquiries at the South Australian School of Art led him to discover that he was the most highly qualified potter in South Australia, a situation which, rather ironically given his background, led to him being employed in 1956 as a teacher of ‘pottery and sculpture’. The episode of Leckie swimming naked in the River Torrens and of his subsequent arrest (a seemingly trifling incident which provided front page titillation for the tabloid press and ultimately led to Leckie’s dismissal from his teaching post in 1962), introduced a surprisingly productive period during which he exhibited widely, undertaking many important commissions and becoming President of the Contemporary Art Society of South Australia. In 1964, he was one of three Australian ceramicists chosen to represent that country in the International Ceramics Exhibition in Tokyo, with his work, Destroyed City also appearing on the cover of Pottery in Australia. In 1966, Alex Leckie decided to return to Britain. He spent a short time in London at the Central School of Art before returning to Scotland, where he was appointed Head of Ceramics at the Glasgow School of Art in 1968, a position he held for the next twenty years. In an obituary published in The Scotsman, Jimmie Macgregor wrote that Alex Leckie ‘ … took a moribund ceramics department by the scruff of the neck, completely transforming it and turning out students who were a credit to the school.’ Alex Leckie died in Paisley in 2010 aged 77. Three of Alex Leckie's ceramic decanters were sold by McTear's in November 2018 achieving hammer prices of £480, £550 & £650.