The homoerotic brilliance of artist Michael Leonard

British artist Michael Leonard, renowned for his figurative work, portraiture and illustrations, has died at the age of 90. Leonard passed on July 28, according to a posting on his official Instagram account.

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Leonard was born in India in 1933 to British parents and relocated to England in 1945. He studied Commercial Design and Illustration at St Martin’s College in the 1950s. Afterward, he took up work as an illustrator. However, he soon began to develop his own, more personal body of work.

It wasn’t until the 1970s that he honed a style that brought him to wider attention and earned him a following on the London art scene. He’d already turned 40 when he had his first solo exhibition in 1974.

Leonard painted people and the spaces in which they worked and lived. Much of his output appears to capture people unaware, just going about their daily lives. Many of his portraits in the 70s included reflections in windows or mirrors.

A well-known series of images, from the last 1970s to the early-80s, focused on construction site workers.

Much of Leonard’s output was unashamedly homoerotic in nature. He contributed images to the 1977 groundbreaking book, The Joy of Gay Sex. He also sketched and painted hundreds of nudes, many of whom depict men dressing or undressing.

The Queen and her corgi

Leonard excelled at portraiture. In the mid-80s, he was commissioned to make one of his most famous images. Readers’ Digest magazine asked him to paint a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II to mark her 60th birthday.

Her Majesty sat for Leonard and he suggested she include one of her corgis in the sitting. The presence of her beloved pet might explain why she seems so at ease in the resulting image.

The painting proved hugely popular. It was later donated to London’s National Portrait Gallery, where it remains in the permanent collection.

“An oasis of beauty and tenderness”

Gallerist Henry Miller represented Leonard in recent years.

“I do not recall how I first became aware of Michael’s work; the lasting memory however is a feeling of being moved when I did so,” he said via email to Queerty.

“For me, growing up in the 80s, which was a very different time culturally, Michael’s male nudes were an oasis of beauty and tenderness; defiant in their outlook, executed with sheer brilliance. The more I saw of Michael’s work, the more I became conscious of the breadth of his range.”

Miller met Leonard in 2017 through a longtime friend.

“We had dinner a few times, and he very kindly started giving me a few drawings to sell for him. He had retired due to ill health some years before. In 2018, I held an exhibition for him, his first in London for nearly 20 years.”

In April of this year, Miller organized an exhibition of Leonard’s nudes in London.

“Although Michael is not a household name, his work is very well-known,” says Miller.

“Often people don’t know his name, but know and recognize his work. For example, his portrait of the Queen is extremely well-known and loved, but most people couldn’t name the artist! He was someone who was completely involved in and dedicated to his craft, but as he didn’t seek personal publicity, his name is sometimes forgotten.”

Despite his prolific body of work, Leonard doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page.

“I will always be eternally grateful to Michael for allowing me to show and sell his work,” continued Miller. “I was moved when I first came across him as an artist 30+ years ago, and his work has never ceased to have that effect on me.”

“Designed to stimulate the imagination”

In his own words, Leonard said he regarded all his images as “celebratory and designed to stimulate the imagination.”

Sir Roy Strong, in the foreword to the 2021 book Michael Leonard, Painter and Illustrator, by Patrick Bade, summed up the breadth of his talents.

“It is a rare artist who can cite on his curriculum not only one of the best portraits of her Majesty the Queen, but also some illustrations for The Joy of Gay Sex.”

See more of Leonard’s work, much of which is too explicit for us to show here, at michaelleonardartist.com. Besides his nudes, it includes most of his portraits and more notable illustration work.