Kristian Baxter of the UK-based Briercliffe Society geneaological website kindly got in touch in October to remind me that I had a fairly well-known artist in my family. It had been many years since I’d heard the name Noel Leaver, but my mum was quite proud to have met him on several occasions, and his influence was revived every time she piked up a paintbrush. He died two years before I was born.

Noel Leaver is in the middle of this group admiring someone else’s work during Civic Arts Week at Burnley’s Central Library, the year before Noel died. The town’s mayor is enchained on his right.

Kristian also provided a link to the site’s Leaver family tree, which runs back a couple of hundred years to an old fella with the grand patriarchal name Abraham, who did indeed live in Briercliffe, Lancashire. Noel appears among the offspring of Peter Leaver, who’s #19 on the list. How my Uncle John Leaver fits into all of this remains to be determined. Kristian is ready to track the connection once we can provide him with a bit of information.

Noel’s parents, Peter and Elizabeth, were both born and died in Worsthorne, the village outside Burnley where I too was born. The photos show the church in Worsthorne in whose graveyard my Uncle John is interred and, presumably, Noel’s parents as well.

John Leaver, pictured here, was the husband of my mother’s sister Elsie, and I’m guessing that Noel was John’s cousin. My mother had a small painting by Noel, which my sister now owns, though, rather alarmingly, she can’t remember where she’s put it.

At any rate, Cousin-Something-Something-Removed Noel has his own website, set up just this year by Robert Bruce. Not Robert the Bruce, another one. From his pages I’ve gleaned some information and images, though most of the scans of Noel’s paintings are poor, as he admits. Someone forgot to adjust the focus.

The site does have more than 250 works on view, though, and I was surprised to see that Noel had roamed quite far in his time. “His famous ‘Eastern Scenes’,” as Robert Bruce calls them, were unknown to me. These are actually North African (possibly some Middle Eastern), pocked with mosques and minarets, but sharing the same fascination with high walls as his paintings from France, Germany, Italy and the length of England. There are a few American views too, including Hoover Dam (which is nothing but a very high wall). The one show here is titled “Italian Town” on the website, and the one at the top of the post “An English Country House”.

“Prices for Leaver’s works have risen considerably over the last 10 years,” Bruce notes, and he mentions that Towneley Hall, the old estate house just outside Burnley, where Noel and Uncle John lived and where I was born, has some 20 Leaver paintings. Towneley was on the British tour I reported in Travels with Paul, Part 2.

Noel Harry Leaver (1889-1951) was born in Austwick, Yorkshire, and began studies at the Royal College of Art at the daring age of 16. He got top grades in architecture, painting, modelling and design and, upon ggraduation, was named a full associate — for the first half of his career signing his paintings “Noel Leaver ARCA” — and handed a batch of travelling scholarships.

Back from Italy in 1912 he taught at the Halifax School of Art for three years, then switched to the Burnley School of Art, where he remained until the mid-1930s. Robert Bruce says success came early, thanks to the way he rendered skies and architectural forms as well as the stirring subject matter he depicted.

I remember well the fine detail of the buildings, which amazed me when I first properly looked at his work as a teenager. His composition can be quite breathtaking, as it the painting shown on this page of York Minster, the cathedral towering above a row of labourers’ houses.

“At least 41 of his works” were sold in the US in the latter half of Noel’s career, Bruce says, including a commissioned painting of “Boulder Dam”. Not sure if this is the same piece as the one identified as “Hoover Dam”.

“His later work is generally more highly regarded. Expect to pay up to £3,000 for a good example in excellent condition. Good early works can be bought for around half that amount.

“When Leaver changed [agents] in about 1929 he was ‘replaced’ by an artist who produced similar eastern-type subjects,” Bruce continues, by way of a warning on facsimiles — this chap just wasn’t as talented.

According to Leaver’s will, which is on the Briercliffe website, when he died on July 24, 1951, he left behind not much more than you’d pay for one of his good paintings today: £3,873. His widow Jane had that to keep up their home, identified as Rowan Cottage on Harriet Street in Burnley.

Here is “Allerton Bridge, Devon”.

“York Minster”

“City Gate”

Noel’s grave in Burnley, photo courtesy of the Briercliffe Society.

This Google Earth image shows Harriet Street in Burnley, and it looks like a lovely spot with the churchyard alongside. To the lower right is Albion Street where my sister was born — not quite two months before Noel Leaver died.

Another satellite view showing all of Burnley with Noel’s former residence on Rossendale Avenue and my Uncle John Leaver’s home, Hollins Farm.