Frederic Leighton: Work in Paris and Rome

"Pavonia" by Frederic Leighton

"'Nothing succeeds like success' might indeed have been Frederic Leighton's maxim, but he thoroughly understood that success also spells work and that work meant self-denial. So off to Paris he went and fixed himself in a studio in the Rue Pigalle. With the sum he received for his 'Cimbue' Leighton gave commissions to several struggling young artists and thus early began that course of magnificent benevolence which was a marked characteristic of his life.

The greater part of 1856 found him working away in and about Paris. Fontainebleu quite naturally attracted him, and at Barbizon he made an attentive study of Jean Francois Millet, whose truthfulness, sincerity and nobility delighted him. Here it was, doubtless, that Leighton came across the work of Corot, whose treatment he admired and classed it alongside that of Constable and Turner.

Very many beautiful landscapes were done in watercolour, and many studies in pencil, some of which Leighton finished on his return to Paris and used them as backgrounds for his more ambitious compositions.

The winter of 1858-59 he spent in Rome working busily at 'A Roman Lady - La Nanna,' 'Pavonia,' 'Sunny Hours,' and 'Samson and Delilah.'  His aim and style were quite ahead of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. He sought his subjects in the mazes of mythology, amid the scenes of Scripture, and in the pages of Vasari. His talent was cordially recognized by the leaders of that grop and when he returned to London for a visit in 1858, he was welcomed fraternally by D.G. Rossetti, Holman Hunt, Ford Madox Brown, William Morris, and J.E. Millais."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "Lord Leighton of Stretton, P.R.A." by Edgcumbe Staley.)