Back View of the Elephant at the Regent's Park Zoological

William John Leech was an Irish painter and impressionist. Developed and encouraged by Walter Osborne, Leech came to critical attention for his landscapes and interiors, particularly those in Concarneau in Brittany. He is better known today for his works that feature his first wife, Saurin Elizabeth, and which include A Convent Garden, Brittany (1913) and The Sunshade (1913). Leech was once mistakenly attributed as the artist for The Goose Girl. Leech's painted works never achieved the public attention that critics believed they merited, a fact partly attributed – even by Leech himself – to his highly reclusive nature, and also to his need for personal privacy due to his second relationship with May Botterell.