Bettws-y-Coed

Landscape painting in oil became steadily more popular throughout the 19th century. John Constable and J.M.W. Turner take credit for establishing landscape as a suitable theme for painting. Until then history paintings had been considered more important, but increasingly naturalistic oil paintings of picturesque views of the British landscape appealed to a wider section of the art-buying public. Many people who could not afford such paintings bought reproductions of them.

Benjamin Williams Leader (1831-1923) was an English landscape painter whose father knew and admired John Constable. He trained at the Government Schools of Design in Worcester and the Royal Academy Schools and exhibited work at the Royal Academy betwenn 1857 and 1922 as well as at the British Institution and the Birmingham Society of Artists.

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Leader's landscapes were based chiefly on views of the Midlands, around Worcester, and in Scotland, although he was particularly fond of visiting and painting Bettws-y-Coed, North Wales, which inspired some of his best work.