Leslie Worth PRWS

1923 - 2009

Leslie Worth was born in Bideford, Devon, attending the local Art School and the Royal College of Art, later teaching at Epsom School of Art. Many of his watercolours are scenes on the Epsom Downs. Although he used oils, it is as a consummate exemplar of watercolour style and technique that Leslie Worth is best known and admired by his fellow artists. Few, if any, 20th-century artists could lay down a watercolour wash better than Worth, but he was far more than a supreme technician. Inspired by Japanese and Chinese masters, as well as J. M. W. Turner, the laying of a beautiful wash was as much a meditative process of his sensitive observations of natural phenomena as it was a means of picture making. With a laconic Devon drawl, Worth was an outstanding and witty raconteur at the biannual suppers of the Royal Watercolour Society, of which he became President. Having worked closely with him for ten years, I was thrilled that Leslie asked me to write a book surveying his career and art. In 2025, the Burton at Bideford Art Gallery and Museum staged an exhibition of Leslie Worth's paintings and drawings.