SIR F. LEIGHTON, P.R.A.

SIR F. LEIGHTON, P.R.A.

Studio portrait of Frederic Leighton

1884

Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, London publisher

D. Appleton & Co., New York publisher

Sir F. Leighton, PRA, albumen print, approx. 6½ x 8½ in., by Joseph Parkin Mayall (1839-1922), 1883

F. G. Stephens, Artists at Home, photographed by J. P. Mayall and reproduced in facsimile by photoengraving on copper plates / edited, with biographical notes and descriptions, by Frederick George Stephens (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington; New York: Appleton & Co., 1884), n.p.

Leighton, Frederic, 1st Baron Leighton of Stretton (1830-1896), English painter

March 1884

Photograph copyrighted February 21, 1884. Copyright owner and author of photograph, Joe Parkin Mayall, 548 Oxford Street, London (Public Records, National Archives, Kew, COPY 1/367/82)..

Description: "'Photograph of Sir F. Leighton in his Studio, seated.' Subject sits in chair with hand on small table in huge studio with paintings in gilt frames on far wall."

The artist slouches slightly in a chair positioned in the center of the composition, set between two small round tables; a small figural sculpture, which he appears to touch, stands on the table to his right. Lining the wall behind him is a full bookcase and several framed paintings, many of them portraits of ladies; a drawing for a roundel painting rests on an easel set before a heavily draped window.

Jeremy Maas, The Victorian Art World in Photographs (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1984), fig. 240, p. 126.

Caroline Dakers, The Holland Park Circle: Artists and Victorian Society (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), fig. 90, p. 189.

Andrew Stephenson, “Leighton and the Shifting Repertoires of ‘Masculine’ Artistic Identity in the Late Victorian Period," in Frederic Leighton: Antiquity, Renaissance, Modernity, edited by Tim Barringer and Elizabeth Prettejohn, Studies in British Art 5 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), fig. 82, p. 240.

Helen Valentine, ed., Art in the Age of Queen Victoria: Treasures from the Royal Academy of Arts Permanent Collection (New Haven: Royal Academy of Arts, London, in association with Yale University Press, 1999), p. 152. (Photo from RA Archives)

Jason Edwards and Imogen Hart, editors, Rethinking the Interior, c. 1867–1896: Aestheticism and Arts and Crafts (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), fig. 10.1, p. 214.

Lynn Federle Orr and Stephen Calloway, editors, The Cult of Beauty: The Victorian Avant-Garde 1860-1900 (London: V&A Publishing, 2011), fig. 227, p. 244.

“Reviews: ‘Artists at Home.’” The Derby Mercury (Derby, England), issue 8828, March 26, 1884. "The four plates in the part (No. 1) now before us represent Sir Frederic Leighton, Mr. W. C. Marshall, Mr. T. Webster, and Mr. V. C. Prinsep, in their workrooms, and in their habits as they live there. The portraits of the artists are admirable as likenesses, and the details of the studios themselves are admirably brought out."

“Art in September.” The Magazine of Art 7 (September 1884): xlviii. "Of 'Artists at Home'—photographs by Mr. Mayall and text by Mr. F. G. Stephens—we have received the first five numbers. To us, we confess it, the publication, if in some sort useful, is absolutely devoid of interest. Mr. Stephens’s text is not much more than catalogue; and Mr. Mayall’s photographs—or rather, the photo-engravings on copper plates reproduced therefrom—are singularly lifeless and dull. Everybody looks as though he were sitting for his portrait; the very furniture is posing; and over all is that terrible and tremendous presence, the photographer’s light, “the light that never was on sea or land.” Mr. Calderon affronts the camera with much sternness; Sir John Gilbert has the sun in his eyes, and comes out very white and vague; Mr. Boehm, sitting desultorily among busts and statues, seems to have been caught in the act of reading the paper; while Mr. Alma Tadema, as unlike himself as possible, leans boldly and airily on the chimney-piece, and Mr. Frank Dicksee, austere yet frightened, does even as Mr. Alma Tadema, and Mr. Val Prinsep turns from his picture with a frown, as if he felt inclined to wring the photographer’s neck. Other artists presented to the public are Mr. Webster, the President (a sufferer, but resigned), Mr. Redgrave, Mr. Cousins, Mr. Millais, Mr. Pettie, Mr. Marshall, and Mr. Marcus Stone."

F. Leighton, model of An Athlete Wrestling with a Python, 1877, bronze (larger version in Tate, London).

F. Leighton, model of The Sluggard, c. 1884, bronze (larger version in Tate, London).

F. Leighton, Decoration for the Dome, St. Paul's. The Lower Circular Panel: "The Reesurrection" ("The Sea gave up the dead which were in it.") Designed by Sir F. Leighton, P.R.A., 1884. Reproduced in The Builder 47 (July 5, 1884), n.p.

F. Leighton, Margaret "Eustacia" Dalrymple Smith, oil on canvas, location unknown. Sotheby's phot reproduced in Dianne Sachko MacLeod, Art and the Victorian Middle Class: Money and the Making of Cultural Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 294, plate 55.

The online edition of this work in the public domain, i.e., not protected by copyright, has been produced by the Emory University Digital Library Program.

FOLIO2011_134_014.tif

Stuart A. Rose Manuscripts and Rare Books Library, Emory University, Atlanta, GA

Omeka record contributed by Linda Merrill

September 5, 2016

November 16, 2016
January 20, 2017

Photoengraving on copper

6 1/2 in. x 8 5/8 in. (16.4 cm x 22 cm)

10 7/8 in. x 14 1/2 in. (27.7 cm x 36.8 cm)

(Printed on the mount beneath the image) J P Mayall Photo | London published by Sampson Low Marston Searle & Rivington 188 Fleet St. | Park Lane Studio London | SIR F. LEIGHTON, P.R.A.

TIFF image, 76.5 MB