Leonard Walker (1877-1964)

Leonard Walker (1877-1964)

A rare Arts & Crafts stained glass panel titled Cædman,1934

depicting a kneeling figure in front of a saint, framed in oak

signed and dated (to the glass, lower left), titled (to the glass, lower right)

56 x 39.5cm.

Catalogue note:

Leonard Walker was a prominent painter and stained-glass designer whose studio was based in Hampstead, London from 1911. Over the course of his career, he created stained glass windows for a wide range of religious and secular buildings across the UK and internationally.

Although modern scholarship has largely overlooked Walker’s contribution to stained glass, he was a prolific and widely recognised artist during his lifetime. His work was frequently featured in both local and national press, reflecting the high regard in which it was held.

Walker began producing stained glass in the 1890s, but most of his output dates from the 1920s onwards. Among his most significant works is The Ascension at St Chad’s Church, Bensham, Gateshead (c.1916), executed in the Arts and Crafts style. His international reputation was further cemented when he received an honourable mention at the Paris Salon in 1921 for a stained-glass roundel depicting two Chinese vessels at sea, part of his commission for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Hall in Singapore (1923). In 1925, he was awarded the Diplôme d’honneur at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, an accolade that made him the only English artist to receive such a distinction that year.