AN ENGLISH IDYLL: LESLIE MOFFAT WARD Paintings and Prints (Paperback)

Leslie Moffat Ward (1888-1978) lived in Bournemouth for most of his life, teaching at the Municipal College of Art and becoming a key figure in the Bournemouth Arts Club. His work was regularly shown at the Royal Academy and he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Painter Etchers (RE) in 1936. He is perhaps little-known outside Dorset, but this catalogue and the accompanying exhibition confirm his position as one of England's most significant twentieth-century painter-printmakers. Ward's evocative etchings, lithographs, linocuts and wood engravings capture a disappearing world of tranquil countryside and bustling waterways. Idyllic views of Poole Harbour and the Isle of Purbeck reflect his love of the Dorset landscape, but he travelled widely in search of pastoral subjects and took delight in the decaying buildings of Britain's historic towns. His passion for working boats and industrial architecture took him to the Thames, Medway and Humber. Leslie Ward was also an accomplished painter in oils and watercolour, capturing the chalk cliffs, ruins and architectural oddities of an England that would have been familiar to Hardy or Dickens. His monochrome prints reveal a mastery of atmosphere, light and shade and this book introduces us to an overlooked master of British landscape art.