Leonard Gow
Medium
drypoint
Dimensions
sheet: 39.3 × 27.2 cm (15 1/2 × 10 11/16 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Miss Elisabeth Achelis
Accession Number
1942.6.16
Art Historical Context
**Leonard Gow**, a striking 1927 drypoint Sir Muirhead Bone, the likeness of Leonard Gow, a prominent Scottish shipowner and art collector. Bone, a leading British printmaker knighted for his contributions to art, was renowned for his meticulous etchings and drypoints that blended architectural precision with portrait intimacy. Created in the interwar years, this work reflects Bone's skill in portraying sitters with a sense of quiet dignity, drawing from his earlier fame for World War I sketches and Scottish landscapes. Drypoint, the medium here, involves scratching directly into a metal plat...
About the Artist
Sir Muirhead Bone
Sir Muirhead Bone (1876–1953), born David Muirhead Bone in Partick, Glasgow, to a journalist father and descended from a family of printers, showed early artistic promise. Apprenticed at fourteen first as a porcelain painter and then as an architect's draughtsman for four years, he honed his draughtsmanship while attending evening classes at the Glasgow School of Art under teachers Archibald Kay a...