Frederick Leighton was a hugely successful and popular Victorian painter and sculptor of the highest order. He was the first English painter to be given a peerage. Like many Victorian artists, his themes were often of classical mythology, or simply portrayed beauty for its own sake.

Victorian art did not have a message!

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His first major painting was Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna (above left), begun in late 1853 in his studio in Rome. This painting was sent to the Royal Academy in 1855 and was bought on the opening day of the exhibition by Queen Victoria for 600 guineas (£630). She wrote "Albert was enchanted with it, so much that he made me buy it". Leighton was only 25 and his reputation was made.

The rich colouring and especially his brilliant handling of fabrics and drapery show a skill and experience few could match. Leighton noted "Combination of expressed motion and rest source of fascination in drapery - wayward flow & ripple like a living water together with absolute repose". Look at the costumes in Captive Andromache (above, upper right) for an example.

Like many Victorian paintings, the lavish yet formal style was so out of favour by the 1960s that his most famous work, Flaming June (above, lower right), couldn't fetch £50 at auction.

Leighton did not want to paint pretty pictures. He once said "By the by, if you think my picture pretty, please don't say so; it's the only form of abuse which I resent".

In Idyll (upper right),the nymph on the right is Lily Langtry, famous mistess of the Prince Of Wales, later King Edward VII.

Another of his models was the child Connie Gilchrist, who appears in The Music Lesson (above right), At A Reading Desk and Winding The Skein (centre left). She also modelled for Lewis Carroll and Whistler, became a novelty skipping-rope dancer in music hall and later married Lord Orkney.

Leighton died in 1896, at the age of 66, without finishing his final work, the painting of Perseus On Pegasus (above, right). The rough work on the sky and rocks below do not detract from the studies of man & horse.