Frederic Leighton

Frederic Leighton (1830–1896) became the most honored British artist of the Victorian age, and he earned it. Born in Scarborough to a prosperous physician, he spent his youth traveling Europe with his cultured family. He trained in Frankfurt, Florence, and Paris, where he met Ingres and Corot. This cosmopolitan education set him apart from most British painters. His 1855 painting Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna so impressed Queen Victoria that she purchased it directly from the Royal Academy exhibition. Leighton was twenty-four.

He settled in London in 1860 and quickly rose through the Academy's ranks. His paintings depicted classical mythology, biblical subjects, and literary scenes in a grand, Academic style that combined High Renaissance formality with Victorian sensibility. He embraced Aestheticism, the avant-garde movement emphasizing beauty over content. His Holland Park studio-house, now the Leighton House Museum, features an Arab Hall covered with historic Islamic tiles, reflecting his fascination with the Middle East. He also became a pioneering sculptor late in career.

His masterpiece, Flaming June (1895), depicts a sleeping woman in flowing orange drapery, her pose borrowed from Michelangelo's Night. The painting fell into obscurity after his death, was rediscovered in a Battersea house in the 1960s boxed over a chimney, and sold for just £50. Today it's one of the most reproduced Victorian images. Leighton was knighted in 1878 and created a baronet in 1886. In January 1896, he became the first painter ever raised to the peerage. He died the following day, making his the shortest-lived peerage in British history. Works are at Tate Britain and the Metropolitan Museum.