Richard Hayley Lever (1876-1958)
Hayley Lever’s exceptional career path took him from the shores of his native Australia to those of England, and then the United States. Described as an artist of “individuality,” he refused to ally himself with any particular style or movement; rather, guided by his belief that “art is the re-creation of mood in line, form and color,” he incorporated the precepts of Realism, Impressionism, Tonalism and Post-Impressionism into his art, applying those strategies in accordance with the emotion and aesthetic affect he wished to convey. In America, where he achieved his greatest acclaim, he was viewed as a proto-modernist, lauded by critics such as Edgar Holger Cahill, who declared: in all his painting, whether it is of boats dancing on the waters of the Cornish coast, the ferry bridges and boats and streets of Gloucester, Massachusetts, the steaming asphalt highways of New York City, or the gently upheaving Catskills about Woodstock, it is always Lever who addresses us.
Hayley Lever was born on September 28, 1875 in Bowden Tannery, a suburb of Adelaide, Australia. The son of Albion W. Lever and his wife, Catherine (Hayley) Lever, he was christened Richard, but as a professional artist he used his second and last names only.
