Frederic, Lord Leighton, P.R.A. | LILY

Frederic, Lord Leighton was an English painter who was equally influenced by his artistic training on the continent and in London. He was most drawn to historical, biblical and classical subjects and his work came to be representative of the Victorian era. The artist first studied under the Nazarene artist Eduard von Steinle in Frankfurt and later became enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence. He subsequently spent formative years in Rome where he was exposed to Renaissance masters and Antiquity, developing a graceful and academic style centered around his skill as a drapery painter (Baetjer, p. 284). From 1855-59, he lived in Paris, where he met Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Eugène Delacroix, expanding his sphere of influence. When he returned to London in 1859 he associated with the Pre-Raphaelites and was elected president of the Royal Academy in 1878.

Throughout his career, Leighton painted half-length and three-quarter length studies of English, Italian and Spanish models wearing peasant costumes or draped in classical robes. Lily was one of three studies owned by Alexander Bannatyne Stewart of Rawcliffe House until his sale in 1881. The works have frames of a similar style and it is possible that the three were installed together (Baetjer, p. 284). The other two studies are entitled Teresa, the whereabouts of which remains unknown, and Lucia, a bust-length study of a woman in profile currently in The Metropolitan Museum of Art at the bequest of the nineteenth-century American heiress and collector Catharine Lorillard Wolfe.