Music Lesson, 1877 Oil on canvas 36 1/2" x  37" Collection: Guildhall Art Gallery, Corporation of London

With an interest in late Victorian English painters, and the thoughts and ideas prevalent to that period, this past summer we undertook a self-guided exploration of London, Surrey and the Lakes District to search out the homes, galleries and memorials created by, as well as dedicated to, Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830-1896), George Frederick Watts (1817-1904) and John Ruskin (1819-1900). Our hope was to discover what remained of these men, their work, and the world they hoped to reflect and influence through their artistic vision. The first of our explorations was the sphere of Leighton and his Holland Park home in London.

During the second half of the nineteenth century, a lively art scene flourished in London, England. In the capital of the British Empire, a wealthy and sophisticated class of patrons nurtured a booming art market. The eminent Victorian painters and sculptors prospered and lived in princely style. A number of artists built combination homes and studios in the fashionable Holland Park section of London's Borough of Kensington.

After the passing of ten decades, only one of Kensington's studio/homes stands open to the public - that of Frederic, Lord Leighton. Leighton House reveals, as nothing else could, the sophistication and interests of its famous occupant. The fact that Leighton House still exists is miraculous, as it might have been levelled in wartime by bombs, or in peacetime by the wrecking ball. Besides the hand of providence, Leighton House owes its survival to its beauty, to its usefulness as a cultural centre in the community, and to the notoriety of its builder.

Leighton enjoyed acclaim as England's premier artist and won the affection of his contemporaries in the course of a remarkable life. His grandfather, Sir James Leighton, had been court physician to His Imperial Highness, Tsar Alexander II of Russia . Frederic's father, Dr. Frederic Septimus Leighton, who also pursued a medical career, possessed a gift for languages. Frederic's mother loved music and had a talent for drawing. From Russia, the family returned to England, where Frederic was born at Scarborough in 1830.

Each winter from 1841 the Leightons toured the Continent, providing Frederic with a cosmopolitan upbringing. Frederic enrolled in art schools wherever his family decided to spend time, including the Berlin Academy, the Accademia delle Belle Art in Florence, and the Stadelsc hes Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt. In Frankfurt he studied under Edward von Steinle, an adherent of the Nazarenes. Von Steinle imparted to his pupil a conception of art as having a profoundly serious purpose.
In 1852 Leighton moved to Rome where he mixed in high society with a circle of not able English expatriates and visitors, including the poets Robert and Elizabeth Browning and William Thackeray. As Thackeray prophesied to the English painter John Everett Millais in 1854, "I have met a wonderfully gifted young artist in Rome, about your age, who someday will be President of the Royal Academy before you."
 

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