CYRIL LEEPER - First Violinist

Not only is Cyril one of our very talented violinst...former Saskatoon portraitist has achieved a distinguished career on world stage

Cyril remembers visiting the National Gallery in London as a child and how intrigued he was that the great masters could make their subjects come to life on canvas.

That early interest led to a distinguished career as a portrait painter, a talent the University community will again be made aware of next week when his portrait of President Ivany is unveiled. A portrait of Peggy McKercher, also done last fall, is under wraps until her term as chancellor is complete.

Although Leeper says that Saskatchewan will always be home, he now lives in Clinton, Ontario, for better access to the world's major centers.

"Portrait painters don't usually have the luxury of having their subjects come to them. Since three-quarter length portraits take about a month each to complete, I spend a considerable amount of time away from my family."

Having recently become an associate member of Britain's prestigious Royal Society of Portrait Painters, Leeper now rents a permanent studio in London. It's given him entry into Britain's highest circles. In 1989, for example, he was invited to paint Malcolm Muggeridge at his home in Sussex. The resulting portrait was used on the cover of National Review when Muggeridge died in 1990.

He was also commissioned to do a portrait of HRH Prince Andrew on his appointment as commander of HMS Cottesmore, and is scheduled to do none other than Queen Elizabeth II.

"Having learned palace protocol while painting Prince Andrew, I'm less daunted at doing the Queen's portrait. The high formality one must adopt in dealing with royal subjects naturally takes getting used to."

When the portrait was dedicated during a ceremony at Royal Albert Hall, Leeper was seated in the box next to Princess Diana and the Queen Mother. Diana, he says, was every bit as beautiful as her photos. He also noted the special relationship between the two.

"There was a warm relationship between them that evening as they talked animatedly together during breaks in the evening's proceedings. It was lovely to see."

Directly after high school, Leeper attended the Accademia di Belle Arte, in Rome, where he spent four years and concluded his five-year program in Madrid at an art school founded by Goya.

"The training I received at both these institutions was extremely thorough. In addition to sculpting and still-life techniques, we studied anatomy and learned to draw from dissections. Out of a class of 40 in our first year, only eight graduated. I'll always be grateful to the wonderful professors there who gave me a thorough grounding in portraiture and, in particular, in such skills as glazing."

Leeper is one of only a few artists in Canada who still does glazing, a time-consuming technique that involves covering the canvas with thin layers of warm reds and cool greyish greens.

"Most portraitists now paint alla prima [first impression] with heavy, opaque paints. I prefer the warmer tones that glazing bestows on a canvas and, hence, on a subject."

It's a technique he says he perfected while doing a seven-year apprenticeship with the great Canadian portraitist, Kenneth Forbes. Forbes did the portrait of Chancellor F.H. Auld, which now hangs in the Administration Building and, during his long life, the portraits of Prime Ministers R.B. Bennett, MacKenzie King, Louis St. Laurent, and John Diefenbaker.

"Forbes was a master glazer, a technique whose pedagogical line can be traced directly to such greats as Rubens and Van Dyke. There's nothing like the one-on-one training I got with Forbes. It's there you learn the real professional trade secrets."

Leeper also credits Forbes with stressing the importance of learning the chemical blends of pigments by heart.

"Knowing the viscosity of pigments from memory allows an artist to paint freely, to mix paints without thinking, so as to achieve the desired effect. If you're caught up with the mechanics of blending paints while you're painting, you won't have the necessary spontaneity to capture character and the nuances of expression."

But technique alone can't make portraits come alive. That, says Leeper, comes only through attaining some rapport between artist and subject.

"I like to meet informally, over dinner perhaps, to see the play of a subject's features when animated or when in repose. During the first sitting, I do four or five rapid sketches and then, in consultation with the subject, pick the one that will form the basis of the portrait. After that, a subject sits about six times for two hours, with breaks."

Once the basic pose is decided, he puts in long days, painting as much in natural light as possible. Because he did the portraits of Ivany and McKercher from mid-October to mid-December, the short days meant having to do some of the backdrops by artificial light.

He lingers painstakingly over details such as the individual pearls in McKercher's necklace or emblazoning "Huskies" on a student's jacket in the background of Ivany's portrait. He invites the subject's family to view the portrait-in-progress and, sometimes, incorporates their suggestions.

Hands are usually the hardest part of a portrait, he says.

"The bones in the human hand are very complex. They usually take twice as long as other features. You can almost assess the skill of artists by their handling of hands."

For the painter, there are also occupational vapor hazards, such as migraines, which can result from painting in a closed room for long hours.

"In a private studio, you can set up a ventilation system. However, for a portraitist, who's by profession peripatetic, it's seldom possible to work in a studio. So it's an occupational hazard that you'll be working with toxic substances, such as the cadmium in red and yellow paint. There are suspicions now that it was the lead in paints - fortunately not used extensively today - which caused Van Gogh's mental disturbance."

Since Leeper completed the portraits of Ivany and McKercher, he's done another three-quarter length one of Cardinal Ambrozic in Toronto; private portraits in Washington D.C. and London; and of Charles ("Chuck") Childers, retiring CEO of the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan.

Meanwhile - evidence that his heart is still in Saskatchewan - he is currently overseeing a donation to University Archives of a large collection of early and invaluable photographs his grandfather, an early railway engineer, took in western Canada and of the railway building, circa 1885.

Sigrid Klaus for On Campus News