British artists' suppliers, 1650-1950 - L

James Lanham 1869-1907, James Lanham Ltd from 1907 onwards, High St, St Ives, Cornwall, also Copper Works, Newlyn, Cornwall 1934. Artists' colourmen, picture framemakers etc.

James Lanham founded his business in 1869, trading as a general merchant. He has been described as well travelled, visiting the major art galleries of Europe, and he became an important part of the artists' community in St Ives, holding regular Saturday afternoon tea meetings for leading artists. In 1912, Lanham sold the business to Benjamin Bramham, who in 1919 in turn sold it to Martin Cock, great-grandfather of the present owners. The Articles of Association from 1907 record the business as a wine and spirit merchant, house and estate agent, dealer in artists' materials, general and fancy furnisher. The business now comprises an agency for Halifax plc, and a property management service which includes the largest part of the business, St Ives Holidays. This history is derived from the firm's website at www.stivesholidays.com/us.htm, where James Lanham's date of birth is given as 1849. This date is confirmed in the 1871 census, but is at odds with the 1881 and 1891 censuses which imply that he was born in London in about 1843 or 1844.

James Lanham was listed in Cornwall directories as 'Fancy Repository & tobacconist' in 1873, and 'Ale & Porter Merchant' and 'Wine & Spirit Merchant' in 1883. The business did not become an artists' colourman with associated Gallery until 1887. The entry in Kelly's Cornwall Directory in 1889 reveals the very wide range of the business as 'Artists' colourman, china, glass and earthen ware dealer, general ironmonger & cutler, general draper & furniture dealer, & ale & porter bottler, wine & spirit merchants'. The business had an account with Roberson, 1898-1908 (Woodcock 1997).

Whistler visited St Ives in 1884 and it is said that he encouraged James Lanham to stock artists' materials since otherwise he had to send away for paints. Alfred Munnings wrote in his autobiography of the beautiful canvases he obtained from Lanham's including one on 'an absorbent, china-clay priming... a tribute to the canvases prepared in those days at St Ives' (Whybrow p.39, see below). Specific works associated with Lanham include Moffat Lindner's Holland, c.1898, and Thomas Cooper Gotch's A Pageant of Childhood, exh.1899 (both Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996, both with Lanham's metal label on stretcher). Lanham, 'that excellent artists' caterer', apparently made it his business to supply the Newlyn School of Painting, set up in 1899, which he visited once a week for that purpose (Judith Cook & Melissa Hardie, Singing from the Walls: The Life and Art of Elizabeth Forbes, Sansom & Co, 2000, p.124).

Lanham advertised nationally, for example in The Year's Art (1890-1912, and subsequently), specifying among other suppliers James Newman, G. Edouard, Schoenfeld and Winsor & Newton for oil and watercolours, and G. Edouard for soft pastels. Lanham also promoted 'Cow-Hair Landseer Brushes, with polished Cedar handles; first introduced into England by me. These are largely in use by Foreign Artists. Very beautifully made, and suitable for oil and water painting'. Also 'Japanese Frames', later described as 'Japanese Art Frames' (1892-1906), Studio or trial frames and Newlyn Art Frames (1895-6). Later the business advertised 'All Sketching Requisites' (The Artist, vol.7, June 1934).

Sources: David Brown, St Ives 1939-64: twenty five years of painting, sculpture and pottery, exh.cat., Tate, 1985, p.98; Martin Whybrow, St Ives 1883-1993 Portrait of an Art Colony, Antique Collectors' Club, 1994, pp.38-40, 73-4, 92-3, 106-7.

Thomas Large, Shoe Lane, London active 1770s-1800s, dead by 1827. Copperplate maker, copperplate printer. A candidate for the next edition of this Directory. Contact Jacob Simon at jsimon@npg.org.uk.

Mrs Mary Ann Law , William Law, see Frederick Thomas Edwards

T.N. Lawrence , T.N. Lawrence & Son Ltd, 14 Red Lion Passage, Fleet St, London EC4, 4 Red Lion Court, Fleet St, 2-4 Bleeding Heart Yard, EC1, 20th century. Printmaking supplies. A candidate for the next edition of this Directory. Contact Jacob Simon at jsimon@npg.org.uk.

C. Barbe 1827-1837, Camille Barbe 1832-1843, Charles Barbe 1838-1848, Lechertier Barbe 1849-1864, Lechertier Barbe & Co 1859-1897, Lechertier Barbe Ltd 1898-1970. At 60 Regent's Quadrant, London, later known as 60 Regent St 1827-1898, 95 Jermyn St SW1 1898-1970. Wholesale at 32 Marylebone St 1854-1863, renamed and renumbered 1863/4, 7 Glasshouse St 1864-1898, also 5 Glasshouse St by 1885-1894. Also at 17 rue Béranger, Paris, later than 1873, 9 rue Taylor 1891. Musical instrument maker until 1844, brush importer by 1833, artists' colourmen by 1844.

The journalist and author, George Sala, in his recollections, London Up to Date, 1895, wrote wistfully of Regent St, describing Lechertier Barbe as 'a very old-established artist's colour shop, indeed, as old, perhaps, as Windsor and Newton in Rathbone Place, although perhaps junior of the historic Newman and the equally antique Reeve'. Sala remembered 'the house of Barbe if not of Lechertier in its actual home in Regent Street, close to the County Fire Office, so long ago as the month of August 1833', when he saw in Barbe's shop window a little waxen effigy, with face encircled by blood-stained bandages, of the Corsican, Giuseppe Fieschi, who had tried to assassinate King Louis Philippe. In another work, Sala wrote that he used to buy his paints and brushes at this business in 1840 (The Life and Adventures of George Augustus Sala, 1895, vol.1, p.60).

Lechertier Barbe & Co advertised that it began trading at 60 Quadrant, Regent St in 1827 (The Year's Art 1899). This claim is quite feasible: in 1828 C. Barbe, musical instrument manufacturer, can be found advertising for an employee from this address (The Times 4 October 1828). The business seems to have been begun by Camille or Charles Barbe, apparently of French origin. By 1833 it was importing painting brushes from France and by 1841, if not before, the Lechertier family would seem to have been involved. The Barbes and the Lechertiers were evidently closely linked and from 1849 the business traded as Lechertier Barbe. It is said to have been the London side of a French business (Callen 2000 pp.30-2, 104), and a Paris address in the 1870s is known. However, while Roberson is recorded as ordering lay figures from Lechertier Barbe in Paris from 1851 (Woodcock 1998 p.462 n.30), little other evidence of the French trading arm has come to light and the business is not included in a recent survey of some Paris 19th-century artists' suppliers (Constantin 2001).

A later biographical dictionary traces the business to Louis Lechertier, 'the house issuing from an ancient French brush firm' (see below). Indeed, Louis Lechertier was recorded as living at Regent's Quadrant in the 1841 census (the house number is not given), as an Importer, age 53, with Madeline, age 47, and Eugene, age 24. It would appear that the latter is to be identified with Francois Eugene Lechertier, of whom more below.

It is worth examining the early history of the business in London in more detail. C. Barbe, musical instrument manufacturer, was listed in the Post Office directory from 1829 to 1837 and was described as Charles in 1838. In Pigot's directory, Camille Barbe was listed as violin and violoncello maker in 1832 and 1833, and as guitar, violin & flute maker and music seller in 1836 and also as a flageolet maker. In Robson's directory he (or she) was listed as musical instrument maker and importer of French painting brushes in 1833, a listing which continues until as late as 1843. However, perhaps these businesses did not pay sufficiently, since advertisements featuring Barbe as a general agent or as a fancy repository can be found between 1835 and 1840 (The Times 24 March 1835, 22 October 1836 and 22 August 1840).

It was not until 1844 that Charles Barbe was first certainly recorded as an artists' colourman (he advertised The Hand-Book to Wax-Painting and materials for wax painting in The Art-Union June 1844 p.129). By 1847 the business was known to Ford Madox Brown, who noted in his diary in September that year, 'Got a lay figure from Barbe's at last' (Surtees 1981, p.4, see also p.32) and the following year E. Lechertier Barbe was advertising their lay figures, including second-hand figures by Huot (The Art-Union Advertiser June 1848 p.xcvii, September 1848 p.cxxxvii).

From 1849 the name given in directories is Lechertier Barbe or, occasionally, Eugene Lechertier Barbe (Watkins' directory 1852, 1853), apparently on the succession of a relative, Eugene, as has been suggested by Cathy Proudlove, and the business issued a trade catalogue in 1851 as E. Lechertier Barbe. E. Lechertier Barbe had other interests for he was proposed for membership of the Zoological Society (The Times 7 October 1853), demonstrating that this was a personal name rather than some sort of composite company name. By 1859 the business was trading as Lechertier Barbe & Co (The Times 8 June 1859). It had an account with Roberson 1842-54 (Woodcock 1997), initially as C. Barbe, then as E.L. Barbe and as Lechertier Barbe, later from 1861-1908 as Lechertier Barbe & Co, with an additional account in 1899 from a Brighton address. It supplied poppy oil to Roberson in the 1840s, siccatifs from the late 1850s and lay figures in the 1850s, 1870s and 1880s (Carlyle 2001 pp.48, 345, Woodcock 1998 pp.450-1, 462 n.30). There was a serious fire at their wholesale depot at 7 Glasshouse St in 1881 (The Times 17 May 1881).

E. Lechertier Barbe's trade catalogue, 1851, as Artists' Colourman, and importer of French painting brushes, was wide ranging. It advertised powder colours, bronze powders, colours in shells, black lead pencils, pencil cases, India rubber, watercolours prepared in cakes, moist colours, moist colours in pastilles, japanned tin boxes, French ivories for miniatures, miniature glasses, colours ground in oil in collapsible tubes, oils and varnishes, prepared cloths and tickens, prepared millboards, prepared cloths on frames, prepared mahogany panels, French lay figures, palettes, palette knives, glass slabs, glass mullers, easels, japanned sketching boxes, tin dippers, water bottles, crayons, porte-crayons, portfolios, pastels, leather and paper stumps, drawing boards, Whatman's best drawing paper, French tinted crayon paper, French tracing paper, sketchbooks, solid sketch blocks, earthenware, mathematical curves and mathematical instruments, superfine London boards, superfine Bristol paper made of Whatman's paper, superfine Bristol boards etc (Price List of Artists' Materials, 1851, 37pp).

Later history: Information is available on subsequent generations of both the Barbes and the Lechertiers. Louis Lechertier's son, Francois Eugene Lechertier (c.1818-58), married Josephine Anna Schnell (1826-86) at St James's Westminster in 1842 (BMD). In the 1851 census he was recorded at 60 Regent St, Lechertier Barbe's business premises, as Francois Lechertier, Artists Colourman, age 33, together with his wife, Josephine, age 25, with two daughters. Born in France, he was naturalised as British on 24 January 1852 but died age about 40 in 1858 (BMD). In censuses, in 1861 his widow was recorded as Anna Lechertier, age 35, Dealer in Artists Materials, with son Jules, age 14, and daughters Helene and Pauline, ages 18 and 16, together with three assistants, and in 1871 Anna J. Lechertier was listed as 'partner artist colourman', born in France, living at 88 Albany St with her son Jules Eugene Lechertier (b.1846), born Westminster, also described as artists colourman (IGI; see also BMD). In June 1861 her daughter, recorded as Helen Camille Lechertier, married Alfred Theodore Barbe (BMD).

Alfred Barbe was listed in trade directories as a partner in the business from 1865 to 1881. In the 1871 census he was recorded as artists' colourman at 9 Glasshouse St (the next door property, no. 7, was described as 'Barbe's Warehouse'), employing six men and five boys. In the 1881 census, he was described as age 44, born in France, wife Helene, no children, living at 60 Regent St, employing 14 men and 11 boys. In 1881 Alfred Theodore Barbe withdrew from his partnership with Anna Josephine Lechertier and Jules Eugene Lechertier, leaving them to carry on the business (London Gazette 26 July 1881), and four years later Anna Josephine Lechertier also withdrew from the partnership (London Gazette 7 July 1885).

Camille Barbe, probably Alfred's wife, was listed as a partner in the business, 1882-97. In the 1901 census Jules Lechertier was listed at 95 and 95a Jermyn St, Lechertier Barbe's premises, as a dealer in artists' materials, with his wife Marguerite, age 41, born in France, and three sons Louis, age 16, Jacques, age 12, and René, age 10, and a much younger daughter.

By 1926 René Lechertier (b.1890) was acting as Managing Director, having served in the French army in World War I, and the business was described as having been established in 1827 by René's great-grandfather Louis Lechertier, the house issuing from an ancient French brush firm (Notable Personalities, 1926, available on microfiche in the British Biographical Archive, series 2, published by KG Saur; see also BMD). The business is said to have been taken over by Reeves (Goodwin 1966 p.39), perhaps in 1898 when it became a limited company and then took on a branch at Brighton but the nature of this business arrangement, including the ongoing family role, remains to be clarified.

The business published catalogues of their products in their instruction manuals on subjects as diverse as fan painting, pastel painting, porcelain painting, tapestry painting and sculpture, from about 1870 until 1900. It advertised in The Year's Art 1883-1914: French and Foreign Specialities, including Binant's canvases, Bourgeois's non-poisonous colours and Eduoard's oil-colour pastels (1883), listing twenty Continental suppliers (1893), illustrating a lay figure, 'Papier-maché and stuffed lay figures From 10 guineas. Inspection solicited. Photos on application' (1896-1902), describing their lay figures as 'life-sized male, female and children', with photograph, and specifying their pastels as the finest stock in the world (1903-12). In the 1920s and 1930s the business advertised various continental artists' materials, including Lefranc's matt oil colours, Blockx's colours and mediums, and Duroziez's retouching varnish and copal mediums (The Studio 13 April 1923), Musy extending frames (The Artist, vol.3, August 1932), Girault and Lefranc pastels (The Artist, vol.5, March 1933), and 'Maroger oil painting medium (soft or stiff) The Newest Method' (The Studio September 1934).

Lechertier Barbe Ltd remained in business at 95 Jermyn St from 1898 until 1970 when the business was the subject of a voluntary winding up order (London Gazette 1 0 March 1970). Some of the trading lines were sold off to C. Roberson & Co Ltd but the goodwill and some artists' materials were acquired by Alfred and Mary Farmer, who continued to sell Lechertier Barbe watercolour boxes and brushes at their business, Ploton's in Archway Road, Highgate, where various artists came to buy these brushes (information in November 2006 from Alfred and Mary Farmer's son, Andrew Farmer, who owns the dormant Lechertier Barbe company and trades as the Gilders Workshop Ltd at Thornwood in Essex, in particular selling Lechertier Barbe brushes). By 1971 Ploton's was advertising as successor to Lechertier (The Artist vol.82, November 1971, p.67).

Artists using Lechertier Barbe's materials: Barbe supplied two supports which were used in tests at the Society of Arts in 1844 and 1845 (see Clare Richardson, The Society of Arts 19th-century trial paintings: a survey of surviving paintings with an investigation of the materials and techniques of a sample group, Courtauld Institute of Art, postgraduate diploma, 2001). One of these, a millboard, has Barbe's stamp over that of Dimes & Elam (qv), partially obscured but clearly visible in infrared, so identifying Barbe's source of supply. Ford Madox Brown was a customer by 1847 (see above), while Dante Gabriel Rossetti referred to Barbe in a letter to Brown in January 1859 (William E. Fredeman (ed), The Correspondence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, vol.2, 2002, p.242). Somewhat later, when Whistler was declared bankrupt in 1879, Lechertier Barbe & Co were among his creditors for the supply of colours, oil and canvas; see www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/letters/08936.asp. John Gilbert was described in 1876 as then using Barbe's single-primed French canvas (The Portfolio 1876 p.15).

Many Lechertier Barbe marks have been recorded, their design changing frequently in the late 19th century but few are firmly dated. In the early 1860s, when the firm operated additionally from premises in Glasshouse St, this address was used on some labels though not on canvas marks. Marked supports include George Munn's Cornish Trawlers at Rest, 1879? (Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996), William Blake Richmond's William Morris, 1880s (National Portrait Gallery), E.J. Turner's Sir Patrick Grant, after 1883 (National Portrait Gallery), Thomas Sydney Cooper's Snow and Sheep, 1884 (Sudley, see Bennett 1971), G.P. Jacomb-Hood's My Sister, 1886 (Walker Art Gallery, see Morris 1996) and Frederick Sandys's Winifred, illustration board, 1896 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, see Elzea 2001 pp.283, 340; see also p.180, 2.A.72). Another marked work is John Singer Sargent's A Backwater, Calcot Mill near Reading, c.1888 (Baltimore Museum of Art, see Katlan 1987 p.275, repr. Katlan 1992 p.460); Sargent also used sketchbooks supplied by Lechertier Barbe, c.1885, 1889, 1892-8 (Fogg Art Museum, Harvard, see Stewart 2000 pp.22, 24, 30).

In 1923 Edward Wadsworth purchased colours from Lechertier Barbe (Barbara Wadsworth, Edward Wadsworth: A Painter's Life, Salisbury, 1989, p.136, information from Jonathan Black). The Maroger oil painting medium (see above) was taken up with enthusiasm by a number of artists, including Roger Fry who corresponded with J. Maroger in November 1931 and who persuaded Vanessa Bell to try the medium for her portrait of Aldous Huxley in 1931 (National Portrait Gallery, see Richard Shone, The Art of Bloomsbury: Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, Tate, 1999, p.232). Later in the same decade, Sir Winston Churchill purchased materials from Lechertier Barbe in 1936 and a catalogue of oil paints available from Lechertier Barbe Ltd, annotated by William Nicholson, is among the Churchill papers at Churchill College; see The Churchill Papers A Catalogue. A catalogue of Lechertier Barbe Ltd's artists supplies is held in the Edward Burra collection in the Tate Archive (TGA771/4/4).

Lefranc & Co, 57 Gracechurch St, London EC 1906, 27 Fetter Lane EC 1906-1910, 28 Fetter Lane 1910-1911, 83 New Cavendish St 1912-1913, 7-9 Bird St, Oxford St 1914-1922. Artists' colourmen.

A leading Paris company with origins going back to 1773. The company was registered in the name of 'Lefranc & Cie' in 1853 (Constantin 2001). It had an account with Roberson (Woodcock 1997) from 27 Fetter Lane 1907-8, and from its Paris address 1881-2. For a history of the business, now Lefranc & Bourgeois, see 'About us' on the company website at http://loisirs.lefranc-bourgeois.com/publication_va/index.php?thm_cle=47. Like Conté à Paris, Reeves, Winsor & Newton and Liquitex, it is now owned by ColArt, a Swedish company, see their website at www.colart.com/.

Lefranc was established in London by 1906, and advertised a wide range of colours and other materials (The Year's Art 1910-14, 1920). It has been suggested that the company may have been encouraged to set up in London by the number of British artists who had trained or worked in Paris and who returned home with a preference for French materials. Lefranc produced extensive catalogues in English as early as 1907 (advertisement, The Studio, 15 October 1907 p.xii), suggesting a significant market, with known catalogue editions as follows: from 27 Fetter Lane, London, c.1910 or before, in three parts (Catalogue of Artists' Materials Part 1, Price List of Materials for Oil Colour Painting, 82pp, Part 2, Price List of Materials for Water Color Drawing, Pastel, pp.88-198, Etching Materials & Tools, 16pp, with testimonials from British artists including F. Cadogan Cowper on Lefranc's matt colours); from 7-9 Bird St, London, 1914 or later (Price List of Artists' Colours and Materials, 214pp); from their Paris address, c.1926 (Price List of Artists' Colours and Materials, 237pp, inserted price list dated August 1926). Although advertising from 83 New Cavendish St in 1925 and 9 Drury Lane in 1934 (The Studio September 1934, p.xvi), these addresses were not given as Lefranc's in Post Office directories and they were presumably the addresses of agents, in the latter case the paint manufacturer Ripolin Ltd (qv) with which Lefranc was associated.

*William Legg , 163 High Holborn, London 1801/2-1806, 254 Oxford St from 1807. Artists' colourman, later a coachmaker.

William Legg (1760-1823) led a varied career: in Reading in the 1790s as a painter, then as a colourman in Holborn from 1801 or 1802 until 1806, and finally as a coachmaker in Oxford St. Legg's premises at 163 High Holborn were previously occupied by James Poole (qv) until his death in 1801, and by Thomas Brown (qv) from 1806, whose entry in the Post Office Directory for 1807 reads, 'Brown T. Colour and Primed Cloth Manufactory, 163, High Holborn, Successor to Mr Legg, late Poole.' William Legg is probably to be identified with the colourman, Legge, whose white paint P.J. de Loutherbourg preferred to Middleton's in 1804, saying it was whiter and purer, and who laid grounds for Loutherbourg (Farington vol.6, p.2317). His stamp, 'WM. LEGG, High Holborn, LINEN', is found on the reverse of the Rice portrait called Jane Austen (Christie's New York 19 April 2007 lot 120).

In the Post Office Directory for 1807, compiled late in 1806, Legg was listed twice at 254 Oxford St, under Legg, W. as 'Colourman to Artists' (an unusual description and exactly the same as that in his 1806 listing at 163 High Holborn), and under Williams & Legg as coachmakers, so clearly linking Legg the colourman with Legg the coachmaker. Legg's partnership with Thomas Williams as coachmakers at 254 Oxford St was dissolved in 1822 (London Gazette 4 January 1823).

William Legg would appear to be the individual of this name, age 60, who committed suicide by cutting his throat at his residence, 20 Park Road, on 13 March 1823 (Morning Chronicle 18 March 1823). In his will, dated 6 March 1817 and proved 29 March 1823, William Legg, coachmaker of 254 Oxford St, referred to his leaseholds at Reading and requested to be buried in St Mary's parish church, Reading (PCC Wills). He made bequests to his mother, Barbara, his wife, Ann, and refers to three of his married daughters, Ann, Elizabeth and Miriam. His will allows us to identify his birth and early years in Reading. William Legg was christened at St Mary's, Reading, the son of George and Barbara Legg. He married Anne Woodard on 27 March 1788 at St Mary's, Reading, and had eight children, including daughters as named above, who were all christened in this church between 1 June 1789 and 7 May 1800 (IGI), demonstrating that Legg was living in Reading before becoming a colourman in London. It is worth noting that John and William Legg were recorded as painters in Reading in the Universal British Directory, vol.4, of about 1798. John Legg is presumably William's older brother, who was christened at St Mary's, Reading in 1756. There is no evidence to suggest that William Legg dealt as a colourman in Reading although he would have been well qualified to do so, given the role of some painters who also acted as colourmen, especially outside London.

John Locker, see Robert Davis