LEIGHTON, FREDERICK LEIGHTON, BARON (183o 1896), English painter and sculptor, the son of a physician, was born at Scarborough on Dec. 3, 1830. He was taken abroad at a very early age, and studied in many different centres, as his family were constantly moving from place to place. He himself declared that he owed most to the teaching of Edward Steinle.
Earlier Work.—The picture which made his reputation in England was "Cimabue's Madonna carried in procession through the Streets of Florence," which appeared at the Royal Academy in 1855, and was purchased by Queen Victoria. Although, since his infancy, he had only visited England once (in 1851, when he came to see the Great Exhibition), he was not quite unknown in the cultured and artistic world of London, as he had made many friends during a residence in Rome of some two years or more after he left Frankfort in 1852. Amongst these were Giovanni Costa, Robert Browning, James Knowles, George Mason and Sir Edward Poynter, then a youth, whom he allowed to work in his studio. He also met Thackeray, who wrote from Rome to the young Millais : "Here is a very versatile young dog, who will run you close for the presidentship one of these days." During these years he painted several Florentine subjects—"Tybalt and Ro meo," "The Death of Brunelleschi," a cartoon of "The Pest in Florence according to Boccaccio," and "The Reconciliation of the Montagues and the Capulets." In 1858 he visited London and made the acquaintance of the leading Pre-Raphaelites—Rossetti, Holman Hunt and Millais. In the spring of 1859 he was at Capri, always a favourite resort of his, and made many studies from nature, including a very famous drawing of a lemon tree. It was not till 186o that he settled in London and in 1866 he took up his quarters at his celebrated house in Holland Park Road, with its Arab hall decorated with Damascus tiles. There he lived till his death.
Classical Pictures.—Amongst the finest of his classical pic tures were—"Syracusan Bride leading Wild Beasts in Procession to the Temple of Diana" (1866), "Venus disrobing for the Bath" (1867), "Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon," and "Helios and Rhodos" (1869), "Hercules wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestis" (1871), "Clytemnestra" (1874), "The Daphne phoria" (1876), "Nausicaa" (1878), 'An Idyll" 0880, two lovers under a spreading oak listening to the piping of a shepherd and gazing on the rich plain below; "Phryne" (1882), a nude figure standing in the sun; "Cymon and Iphigenia" (1884), "Cap tive Andromache" (1888), now in the Manchester Art Gallery; with the "Last Watch of Hero" (1887), "The Bath of Psyche" (189o), now in the Tate Gallery, "The Garden of the Hesperides" (1892), "Perseus and Andromeda" and "The Return of Per sephone," now in the Leeds Gallery (1891) ; and "Clytie," his last work (1896).
Leighton was one of the most thorough draughtsmen of his day. His sketches and studies for his pictures contain the essence of his conceptions, and much of their beauty was often lost in the elaboration of the finished picture. He seldom succeeded in re taining the freshness of his first idea more completely than in his last picture—"Clytie"—which was left unfinished on his easel. He rarely painted sacred subjects. The most beautiful of his few pictures of this kind was the "David musing on the Housetop" (1865). Others were "And the Sea gave up the Dead which were in it" (1892), now in the Tate gallery, and the terrible "Rizpah" of 1893. His diploma picture was "St. Jerome," exhibited in 1869. Among the most individual and beautiful of his pictures are "The Summer Moon," two Greek girls sleeping on a marble bench, and "The Music Lesson." Leighton also painted a few portraits, and executed a few pieces of sculpture.
As president of the Royal Academy, Leighton was punctilious in the discharge of his duties, ready to give help and encourage ment to artists, and his tenure of the office was marked by some wise and liberal reforms. His death occurred on Jan. 25, 1896, and he was buried in the crypt of St. Paul's cathedral. The con tents of his studio were sold at Christie's in the same year; but a large number of his drawings has been secured for exhibition at Leighton House, now a museum.
Leighton was elected an academician in 1868, and succeeded Sir Francis Grant as president in 1878, when he was knighted. He was created a baronet in 1886, and was raised to the peerage in 1896, immediately before his death. He had numerous honorary degrees, foreign distinctions, decorations and prizes. (C. MoN.) See the Royal Academy Catalogue, Winter Exhibition, 1897 ; C. Monkhouse, British Contemporary Artists (1899) ; Ernest Rhys, Fred erick, Lord Leighton (1898, 1900) ; Mrs. Russell Barrington, The Life, Letters and Work of Frederick Leighton (1906).