Oil on canvas; 127 x 178 cm.
Leslie was born in London. His parents were American, and when he was five they all returned to America. They settled in Philadelphia. He was mainly interested in painting and drama, and when George Frederick Cooke visited the city he executed a portrait of the actor from recollection, which was considered a work of such promise that a fund was raised to enable him to study in Europe. He left for London in 1811, bearing introductions to West, Beechey, Allston, Coleridge and Washington Irving, and was admitted as a student of the Royal Academy, where he won two silver medals. At first, influenced by West and Fuseli. His earliest important subject depicted Saul and the Witch of Endor; but he soon discovered his true aptitude and became a painter of pictures dealing with scenes from the great masters of fiction such as Shakespeare and Cervantes.
Of individual paintings we may specify Sir Roger de Coverley going to Church (1819); May-day in the Time of Queen Elizabeth (1821); Sancho Panza and the Duchess (1824); Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman (1831); La Malade Imaginaire, act iii. sc. 6 (1843); and the Dukes Chaplain Enraged leaving the Table, from Don Quixote (1849). He possessed a sympathetic imagination, which enabled him to enter freely into the spirit of the author whom he illustrated, a delicate perception for female beauty, an unfailing eye for character and its outward manifestation in face and figure, and a genial and sunny sense of humor. In 1821 Leslie was elected A.R.A., and five years later full academician.
In addition to his skill as an artist, Leslie was an accomplished writer. His Life of his friend Constable, the landscape painter, appeared in 1843, and his Handbook for Young Painters, a volume embodying the substance of his lectures as professor of painting to the Royal Academy, in 1855. In 1860 Tom Taylor edited his Autobiography and Letters, which contain interesting reminiscences of his distinguished friends and contemporaries.
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