Manchester Ship Canal: The Making of Eastham Dock. Benjamin Williams Leader (1831-1923). c. 1890 (Art Uk dates this to 1891, but Lewis Lusk dates it to September 1890 (see p.7)). Oil on canvas. H 112 x W 184 cm. Photo credit: Gallery Oldham. Accession no. 13.28/1, gift from Miss Platt, 1927. Kindly made available via Art UK on the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Click on the image to enlarge it.
This industrial project seems an unusual choice of scene for Leader. In fact, according to Tim Barringer, it is "unique in his oeuvre." It also stands out among his later paintings because of its sheer energy. But this is where Leader's family background comes in: his father, as a civil engineer, had worked on the Severn Navigation Commission, and his elder brother, having followed in their father's profession, had become chief engineer of the Manchester Canal (Lusk 14). While working in his father's office, Leader himself had even "helped to build a lock or two" (Lusk 15). Finally, the work was a commission given to him by the canal company's chairman, Lord Egerton, who not surprisingly selected it as his favourite among Leader's paintings (Lusk 6). — Jacqueline Banerjee
Bibliography
Barringer, Tim. "Leader, Benjamin Williams [formerly Benjamin Williams] (1831–1923), landscape painter." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Online ed. Web. 4 September 2020.
Lusk, Lewis. "B. W. Leader, RA." The Art Journal (attached monograph). Internet Archive. Vol. 63 (1901). Contributed by the Getty Research Institute. Web. 4 September 2020.
Created 4 September 2020