William Lee-Hankey (RWS, RBA, RI, ROI, RE 1869-1925) is a Chester born artist and illustrator. He specialised in landscapes, character studies and portraits of pastoral life, particularly in studies of mothers with young children.
He worked as a designer after leaving school. He studied art in the evenings at the Chester School of Art then at the Royal College of Art.Later in Paris he became influenced by the work of Jules Bastien-Lepage,who also favoured rustic scenes depicted in a realistic but sentimental style. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1896 and was President of the London Sketch Club 1902-1904. He stayed in France in the early 1900s, painting many of his works in Brittany and Normandy, where he depicted a peasant lifestyle which was already disappearing in England.From 1904 until well after the World War One He maintained a studio at Etaples art colony.He was a prolific exhibitor showing 150 works at the Fine Art Society, 104 at Walker Art Gallery Liverpool, 113 at the Lefevre Gallery, 359 at the Leicester Gallery, 74 at RA, 80 at RE, 42 at RI, 43 at RBA, 125 at RWS and elsewhere.
Writing in the Studio AL Baldry commented “He is in his watercolours an absolute purist; he paints entirely with transparent pigments and he never has recourse to opaque colours; his brushwork is broad and confident-free, on the one hand,from affectation of showy cleverness and on the other, from niggling minuteness or over-elaboration and does not insist, as is the fashion with many present-day painters, upon lowness of tone. 'His French paintings include land-and seascapes such as “The Harbour at Etaples” and the distant view of the town in Auckland Art Gallery and his figure studies like “Mother and Child' and “The Goose Girl” “Sympathy' signed watercolour.