Richard Hayley Lever (American 1876-1958)Canal in Bruges, BelgiumOil on boardSigned (lower right)16 x 24cm (6¼ x 9¼ in.)Provenance:Private Collection, USAThence by descent to the current ownerRichard Hayley Lever was born in South Australia in 1876. An inheritance allowed him to travel to England in 1899 in pursuit of an artistic career. He settled in St. Ives which already had a reputation as a thriving artist's colony, the St. Ives Art Club founded in 1890 with fellow Australian Louis Greer amongst its founding members. Hayley Lever shared a studio with Frederick Judd Waugh and studied under renowned marine painter Julius Olsson and British impressionist Algernon Talmage. As well as painting the views around St. Ives, Hayley Lever also travelled in Europe, notably in Brittany where he painted along the coast at Douarnenez and Concarneau, also known as flourishing artistic centres.In 1904, Hayley Lever returned to Australia where his mother was dying of tuberculosis. However, he returned to St. Ives a year later and, in 1906, married Aida Smith Gale. Persuaded that his art would find greater recognition, he moved to the United States, arriving in New York in 1912 and later took American citizenship. His work was received to great acclaim and featured regularly in exhibitions before the Wall Street Crash in 1929. Although he remained very active artistically for the rest of his life, he drifted somewhat into obscurity and it was not until after his death in 1958, that a largely unknown and unseen body of later work was discovered, leading to a re-evaluation of his career. His importance and influence on American impressionism in the 20th century is now more widely recognised. The present group of works by the artist all come from the same collection and demonstrate provide an insight into the breadth of his work both in St. Ives and Europe and also in the United States.