Leslie Wilkie

• Name — Leslie Wilkie • Birth Name — Leslie Andrew Alexander Wilkie • Born — 27 June 1878 • Birthplace — Royal Park, Melbourne, Victoria • Died — 4 September 1935 • Place of death — Adelaide, South Australia • Resting Place — St Saviour's Anglican churchyard, Glen Osmond • Education — National Gallery schools, Melbourne, under Lindsay Bernard Hall • Known for — Portrait painting; first director of the Art Gallery of South Australia • Children — 1 • Awards — Melrose Prize, 1927 and 1928

Wilkie was born at Royal Park, Melbourne, the son of David Wilkie and Mary Frances, née Rutherford. He was a grand-nephew of Sir David Wilkie. He was educated at Brunswick College and in 1896 entered the National Gallery of Victoria school at Melbourne under Lindsay Bernard Hall.

• Illustration — 1931 drawing by Wilkie of part of Adelaide Destitute Asylum. He occupied a studio, during WW1 and into the early 1920s, on the fourth floor in the Austral buildings 115-119 Collins Street, Melbourne, where John Mather, Charles E. Gordon-Frazer, Alexander Colquhoun and the photographer J.W. Lindt also practiced. A brief profile of Wilkie after his return from Europe appeared in a 1907 edition of The Native companion, which mentions also that he sat for a bronze bust by G. Web Gilbert. In 1919 Colquhoun also wrote a short biography of Wilkie for the biannual Art in Australia.

In August 1926, Association member Leslie Wilkie was invited to apply for the curatorship at the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide, interviewed, and appointed on 1 September 1925, then farewelled by his Art Association comrades at the Ritz Cafe before his departure for Adelaide on the 29th, moving from Melbourne to Trevorten Avenue, Glenunga to take up the post. In replacing the recently resigned H. van Raalte, Wilkie proved popular. Elected to the Royal Drawing Society, London in 1930, Wilkie became president of the Royal South Australian Society of Arts 1932-35, with which organisation he exhibited a portrait of his daughter Jean, a frequent model, in their 1932 Spring Exhibition. In 1934 Wilkie joined a University of Adelaide anthropological expedition to Central Australia where he painted portraits of First Nations people near Cooper Creek. The portraits were later exhibited at the Art Gallery of South Australia.

Wilkie was forced to postpone a lecture on Modern Art in June 1935 when he became ill, with Mary P. Harris filling in with a lecture on Van Gogh, supported by a dramatisation by Wilkie's daughter Jean. He died aged fifty-six in an Adelaide private hospital on 4 September 1935 after successive operations for appendicitis and was buried in St Saviour's Anglican churchyard, Glen Osmond. His wife Alma (née Tunnock), a dentist and musician, had died aged 44 in 1930, and he was survived by their daughter, Jean. Andrew Wilkie (c. 1853–1948), director of the Melbourne Zoo 1923 to 1936, was an uncle. Leslie Wilkie's successor as Director of the Art Gallery of South Australia, Louis McCubbin, son of Frederick McCubbin, was appointed in December 1935.

• Illustration — Miss Wilkie, the artist's daughter • Illustration — Portrait of Jean Wilkie, oil on board • Illustration — Early Morning Oliver's Hill • Illustration — Landscape • Illustration — Leslie Wilkie - Self-portrait

• National Library of Australia • Australian War Memorial • State Library of Victoria • Athenaeum Club, Melbourne • Art Gallery of New South Wales (works including Margaret and an unfinished self-portrait • Art Gallery of South Australia • Royal South Australian Society of Arts • Castlemaine Art Museum • Parliament House Art Collections, Canberra.