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Frederic, Lord Leighton
A Victorian Master:
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Frederic, Lord Leighton, one of the greatest British artists, kept almost all of the preliminary sketches for his works. They form the basis for an exhibit at the Leighton House Museum and have a fascinating history. |
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The sketches begin with Leighton's early student works in Frankfurt in his late teens, continuing to the very last drawings he was working on before his death. Many of the works on display have not been seen in over half a century. |
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Leighton kept every drawing he made, with a few rare exceptions and they formed a remarkable resource which he drew from throughout his career. Lord Leighton bequeathed all his property and his studio-house, now Leighton House Museum, to his two sisters. Shortly after his death the Fine Art Society offered his sisters £1,000 for the drawings, which were catalogued, stamped LLC (Lord Leighton’s Collection). Nearly 1,650 works were sold. The story doesn't end there.
Title: Studies for Captive Andromache, c. 1888
Artist: Frederic, Lord Leighton (British 1830-1896)
Medium: Black and White Chalk on Brown Paper.
Image Courtesy: Leighton House Museum
A group of ‘friends’ set up the Leighton House Committee to establish his house as a museum and purchase as many drawings as possible to form a collection of ‘the best examples of the work executed in every period of Lord Leighton’s life’. As the artist Walter Crane said: ‘To be able to see these records of an artistic life in the true relation to the surroundings of that life would not be the least part of their value’.
Title: Photograph of the studio at Leighton House Museum in c.1900,
showing the second exhibition of the newly formed Drawings Collection and
including many of the c.500 drawings presented to the Leighton House Committee by Leighton's sisters.
The house was open six days of each week from 9 April 1900, and was
dressed with pieces of furniture and rugs, deemed appropriate to the setting.
Image Courtesy: Leighton House Museum
Among those on this committee were Leighton’s neighbor and later biographer Emilie Barrington, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the artists William Holman Hunt, Frank Dicksee, and Briton Riviere and the architect Alfred Waterhouse. Contributors who ‘sponsored’ drawings included H.R.H. The Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), and artists George Frederic Watts, Sir Laurence Alma-Tadema, and Walter Crane, James Knowles, John MacWhirter RA, Sir Hamo Thornycroft RA, Lord Henry Brougham Loch (Governor of the Isle of Man, Victoria and Cape Colony), and banker Leopold de Rothschild. Recently drawings have been presented to the Museum by the cartoonist Sir Bernard Partridge and T. C. Sandercock, grandson of Leighton’s last valet.
Among the highlights will be studies for Leighton's most famous painting Flaming June.
A Victorian Master:
Drawings by Frederic, Lord Leighton
Leighton House Museum:
November 8, 2006 - February 25, 2007
Scarborough Art Gallery:
March 24 - 3 June 2007
Bristol Museum and Art Gallery:
June 22 - 2 September 2007
The Russell Cotes Art Gallery and Museum:
October 16 2007 - January 7, 2008
The Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow:
January 25, 2008 - April 17, 2008