Leslie Marr
Sir Leslie Lynn Marr of Sunderland, 2nd Baronet was a British landscape artist, painter and racing driver.
Early life, education and military service
Marr was born in Durham, England, the son of Lieutenant Colonel and brevet Colonel John Lynn Marr, OBE, TD, of the Royal Garrison Artillery, director of two shipbuilding firms and of the Sunderland Forge and Engineering Company, and Amelia Rachel, daughter of Robert Thompson, of Over Dinsdale Hall, County Durham, a shipbuilder.Marr was educated at Shrewsbury School and Pembroke College, Cambridge. In 1932, at the age of ten, due to his father's death the previous year he inherited the baronetcy held by his grandfather, shipbuilder Sir [James Marr, 1st Baronet], though he did not use the title. He studied engineering at Cambridge University, where he graduated in 1942. During World War II he served as a technician in the Royal Air Force. His interest in painting developed during his posting to Palestine.
Artistic career
Marr is recognised primarily as a landscape artist and painter. After the war ended, Marr attended life classes at Heatherley's Art School in Pimlico and subsequently studied under David Bomberg at what was then known as the Borough Polytechnic. He allocated the upper floor of a bookshop he had rented as an exhibition space for Bomberg's students. Following the Group's dissolution in 1950, Marr continued to paint and to travel across Britain and the continent, and it was at this time that Marr tried his hand at motor racing.Between 1983 and 1991, Marr lived and painted on Arran, and later moved to a home and studio in Norfolk. Artworks by Marr are held in the public collections of the British Academy, Imperial College Collection, Laing Art Gallery Newcastle upon Tyne, and Pallant House Gallery, Chichester.