Frederic, Lord Leighton: a Victorian artist

Frederic Leighton was an artist who was immensely popular during his lifetime but who has fallen out of favour since his death. The modern viewer of his paintings and sculptures, which were mainly on subjects from Greek and Roman mythology, feels little sympathy for their stylised poses and waxen skin tones. However, to the Victorians, immersed as they were in the Classical revival that Leighton did much to create, they were all the rage.

Frederic Leighton was born in Scarborough on 3rd December 1830, the son of a physician, although he spent most of his early years abroad. When he was only ten years old he studied drawing in Rome and afterwards lived in Florence, where he was taught by several Italian artists. He later travelled to Brussels and Paris, where he continued his studies and copied pictures by Titian and Correggio in the Louvre, and in 1850 he moved to Germany and worked in Frankfurt for two years.

He then returned to Paris and set up a studio in the Rue Pigalle. It was from Paris that, in 1855, he sent a painting to the Royal Academy in London entitled “Cimabue’s Madonna Carried in Procession Through the Streets of Florence”. The painting created a sensation in London and was bought by Queen Victoria. British viewers greatly admired its elaborate design, precise drawing and fresh colours.

Leighton did not return to Britain for another five years, but when he did he was immediately lionised and received all the commissions he could handle for paintings in the same style, taking much from the example of the Renaissance masters in their handling of Classical themes. His reception by London society was greatly helped by his courtly manners and the charm of his personality.

He associated for a time with some of the Pre-Raphaelites, but was always too much of an “Establishment” figure to have much in common with artists of the temperament of D G Rossetti, for example. In any case, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of Rossetti, Holman Hunt and Millais had broken up by the time Leighton arrived back in England.

Among his most characteristic paintings were “The Daphnephoria” (now in the Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight), “The Return of Persephone” (Leeds Art Gallery) and “The Bath of Psyche” (Tate Britain, London). These all display close attention to detail and attempts to recapture classical perfection as closely as possible. He was regarded by his contemporaries as having succeeded in this aim better than anyone else since Raphael.

Leighton is regarded by some (e.g. Charles Johnson in “English Painting”, 1934) as having been a better artist as a sculptor than as a painter. Among his best known sculptures are “The Sluggard” and “An Athlete Wrestling with a Python”, which are both in Tate Britain. These portray male nudes as ideal physiques and possess a certain degree of artificiality in the way that the subjects’ musculature is depicted.

The problem with his paintings, to a modern eye, is that they look more like portrayals of statues than of real people. Perfection of form is put ahead of any emotional content. One possible exception to this judgment is the above-mentioned “The Return of Persephone” in which the abducted queen of the underworld is released by Hades to signal the beginning of Spring. In Leighton’s painting (dated 1891) she has her arms outstretched as does her mother Demeter shortly before they will clearly meet in a warm embrace.

Leighton’s popularity with the art world and the general public can be assessed from the honours that were heaped upon him. He became a full Royal Academician in 1868 and President of the RA in 1878, when he was also knighted. He became a baronet in 1886 and the first Baron Leighton of Stretton in January 1896. He was therefore the first British painter to be elevated to the peerage.

However, he also had a less welcome claim to fame in that he died on 25th January 1896, the day after the patent confirming the peerage was issued. As he was unmarried and had no heirs, the title lapsed on his death, making the single day of its existence the shortest ever recorded for a British peerage.

The wide popularity of Frederic Leighton’s works, and those of followers such as Sir Edward Poynter and Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, can be attributed to the revival of interest in the classical world that began in the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign. At a time when the minds of the public were aroused by newspaper reports of discoveries in Greece, Egypt and elsewhere, it is not surprising that visitors to the Academy should have taken a liking to pictures that sought to portray life in classical times.

Whether the art of Lord Leighton will ever excite such interest again is a moot point, given that the emphasis in his works on physical perfection at the expense of feeling and movement runs counter to modern taste. His works can be studied as an insight to the Victorian mind, but that is probably as far as most people today would be willing to go.