Percy Leason was born in the remote wheat farm district in the town of Lillimur just outside Kaniva, Victoria, Australia in 1889.

His first major illustration was a poster for Carlton Brewery in Melbourne of Sam Griffis,[2] from an Edgar Newlands photograph of an itinerant miner,[3] standing at a bar with a full pint.

During these years he studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School under the tutelage of Bernard Hall and Frederick McCubbin.

Paintings of this period included life figures for the Shakespeare tercentenary and portraits of fellow artists Richard McCann and Harry McClellan.

The same year he painted a panoramic scene of the Australian & New Zealand Forces at Gallipoli, now in the War Memorial Museum in Canberra.

The largest of these, Out of Food and Water, depicting the desperate situation of the expedition, is in the National Library of Australia in Canberra.

Julian Ashton praised Leason's work in the magazine Art in Australia, in an article on what he considered a good picture: I have suggested nearly all his exhibits were notable, that being one where composition.

When Leason moved back to Melbourne from Sydney in 1924, the two men bonded their ideas and cemented the style of tonalism they both would follow for the rest of their lives.

In 1928, Leason contended some figures described by the ethnologist John Mathew in 1897 were merely natural stains in the rock, which caused some controversy.

[1] In 1934 at the suggestion of Donald Thomson and Professor Wood Jones he was commissioned by Melbourne University to paint a series of portraits of Australian Aborigines.

In his article he asked visitors "to decide whether the portraits could be classed as an exhibition of works of art or' as an ante-mortem analysis of a moribund race, painted more or less in expiation of our sins in something of the same spirit that in the past stirred ill-doers to undertake the laborious washing of pilgrim's feet.

He developed a keen interest in prehistoric cave art and advanced the theory that these artists made their drawings from sketches of dead beasts.

Titled "The Rise and Decline of Painting", it traced the development of artists representation of the visual image and placed modernism at the bottom the chart.

He held lively painting demonstrations and lectures on realistic tonalism in defiance against the prevailing theories on art.

He painted several tonal studies of Paris and the countryside of the Dordogne region which he visited in particular to justify his theory of cave art.

[citation needed] In 1959 he died on Staten Island, New York City, practically penniless and very despondent at not having received adequate recognition for his labours.

In tribute to his artistic genius, Staten Island Institute curator James Cogin, quoted in the exhibition catalog from Frank Moore Coolby: "Every man ought to be inquisitive every hour of his great adventure down to the day when he shall no longer cast a shadow in the sun.

"[9] Percy Leason's constant questioning of tonal technique as an ideal and his works he left are his legacy and his continuance.