Leonard C. Butler

Leonard C. Butler was a commercial artist and painter, primarily known for his watercolor paintings. He was born in Coventry, Warwickshire, England on July 3, 1898, and first crossed the Atlantic for Toronto, Ontario in 1923. He returned to England after a year and a half.  Butler soon returned to the United States for its “greater opportunities” and came to Buffalo around 1926.  That year, he was included in The BuButler was presented as one of the “Men You Ought to Know.”  She wrote that he had exhibited in the Hall of Nations at Asbury Park (New Jersey), the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and in California, as well as the Town Club and Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo.  Artist Francis B. Valentine believed that Butler “was primarily a watercolorist, but people wanted oils for two exhibits.”  Several newspaper ffalo Artists’ Register as a painter of portraits with a vocation as commercial artist, residing at 22 Holland Place in Buffalo with a studio at 493 Franklin Street.  In a newspaper article written by H. Katherine Smith in 1933, articles refer to him as a self-taught painter.  He was a member of the Guild of Allied Arts, Buffalo Society of Artists and Patteran Society.