Eugene Leake

Eugene Leake was born in Jersey City, New Jersey on August 31, 1911, one of two sons of Eugene W. Leake and Marion (Paige) Leake.^[3] Growing up he was surrounding by paintings belonging to his grandfather. The collection included, American painters, Ralph Blakelock, J. Francis Murphy, and E. Irving Couse.^[4]

As a teenage student at the Hill School in Pittston, Pennsylvania Leake requested an art class so frequently that the school hired an instructor from Philadelphia to teach him once a week.^[1] Leake explains, "'Here was an artist who rode the train up from Philadelphia every Saturday morning to teach me and one other boy - two students out of 450,' says Leake, his voice still tinged with disbelief.'"^[4]

In 1930 Leake briefly attended the Yale School of Fine Arts but soon dropped out having found "... its Beaux Arts orientation tedious and uninspiring."^[1] Next, he left Connecticut and traveled south.

At twenty-two, Leake traveled through the southwest and California before returning to Connecticut. Back in New England, Leake built a studio and made a living painting commissioned portraits and teaching art classes. In 1937 he joined the Art Students League in New York and began showing his paintings at galleries in the area. He had his first one-man show at the Walker Gallery in 1937 after which he was invited to participate in national group shows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Brooklyn Museum.^[1]

During World War II, Leake first took a job at a defense plant, then later joined the Navy, where he continued to paint watercolors during his off hours. In 1949 Leake became the director of The Art Center in Louisville, Kentucky and held the position for a decade. During this time, in addition to teaching painting and composition, Leake taught landscape, portraiture, and life drawing.^[5] Then, at age 48, decided to finish his degree at Yale School of Art and Architecture. The artist subsequently earned his BFA in 1960 and his MFA in 1962.^[1]

When Eugene Leake attended Yale University, Josef Albers had recently retired from the chair of the School of Art but continued to be a presence on campus. Leake described an experience with the Bauhaus master: "Albers came to my studio one day. I was painting semi-abstract landscapes, horizontal bands of color. He said to me, 'I've heard about you. You are de old Prix de Rome - type painter. Mit underpainting und all dot garbage?' I said, 'Yeah, I learned all that.' And Albers looked at my painting and said, 'Vot you doing here? Dis is about color! It's a metamorphosis!'"^[4]

In June 1961 Eugene Leake moved to Maryland after graduating from Yale to "take on the task of reviving the nearly moribund Maryland Institute," as its new President. "He recruited the best artists he could find as teachers, among them the painters Grace Hartigan and Raoul Middleman, sculptors Norman Carlberg and Stephanie Scuris, and painter-printmaker Peter Milton."^[1]

"Leake has found success and recognition not only as an artist but as one of the finest teachers and arts administrators of the recent past. He was for 13 years president of the Maryland Institute College of Art, an institution he almost single-handedly remade from a cobwebbed, struggling vocational training academy into one of the most respected art schools in the nation."^[1]

Despite his demanding schedule at the Maryland Institute College of Art, the painter never stopped painting and developing. In 1974 Leake retired from his role as president of the Maryland Institute College of Art^[6]

In 2013 a new residence hall was open named Leake Hall after him.

"When he retired from the Institute in 1974, he was 63 and [the school's] renaissance was assumed to be his life's magnum opus. But he retired to the rural Maryland countryside north of Baltimore, where he took up the solitary life of a creative artist and [continued as] a successful and respected landscape painter."^[7]  He continued to work until his death in 2005.

In the autumn of 1974 Eugene Leake became the first Johns Hopkins University artist-in-residence. He "founded the program as an informal opportunity for Hopkins students, regardless of experience, to learn the fundamentals of drawing and painting -- to learn to see."^[8]

In The Baltimore Sun art critic Glenn McNatt described Leake's work and legacy: "Leake's brushstroke was like the man himself: precise, energetic, joyous, and ever attuned to the mysterious universal vibration through which paint is transformed into a living thing. Though his art looked exceedingly simple, it was also miraculous, and for this he was, and will be forever, beloved by generations of Marylanders."^[9]

Source:^[10]

C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, Maryland

Green Mountain Gallery, New York, New York

Hamilton Gallery, Charleston, South Carolina

Jacobs Ladder Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland

Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, Maryland

National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.

Tatistcheff and Company, New York, New York

Towson State University, Towson, Maryland

University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky

University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky

Walker Gallery, New York, New York

York College, York, Pennsylvania

Source:^[10]

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, Texas

Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland

Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York

Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio

Cincinnati Museum of Art, Cincinnati, Ohio

Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York

Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York, New York

Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, New Jersey

M. Knoedler and Company, New York, New York

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York

Museum of Modern Art, New York, New York

Owensboro Museum of Fine Art, Owensboro, Kentucky

Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, New York

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Source:^[10]

Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland

Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

J.B. Speed Museum, Louisville, Kentucky

Owensboro Museum of Fine Art, Owensboro, Kentucky

University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky

University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, Maryland

Source:^[10]

Equitable Bank

Equitable Life Assurance Society of America, New York

Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Baltimore Branch

Johns Hopkins University

Maryland Institute College of Art

Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, New York

Noxell Corporation

Piper and Marbury

Robert and Jane Meyerhoff

United States Fidelity and Guaranty Company

Weinberg and Green

Johns Hopkins University awards the Eugene Leake Award to commemorate Leake, who had founded the Homewood Art Workshops at JHU. The award celebrates excellence of select graduating students for outstanding achievements in visual art and is presented annually by the Johns Hopkins Center for Visual Art (CVA). Recipients are chosen by faculty based on their progress, technical skill, and contributions to the artistic community at the university.^{[citation needed]}