Sir Frederic Leighton: 185+ Academic and Pre-Raphaelite Paintings

SIR FREDERIC LEIGHTON Art Book contains 185+ Stunning Reproductions of historical, classical and biblical subjects with annotations and biography.

Biography

Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton was president of the Royal Academy of Arts, was born at Scarborough on 3 Dec. 1830. His family came originally from Shropshire. His grandfather and father were both physicians. His grandfather James (afterwards Sir James) Boniface Leighton was invited to the Russian court, and was court physician under both Alexander I and Nicholas I. His son Frederic Septimus (1800-1892) was educated for the medical profession at Edinburgh, and practiced successfully until about 1843, when increasing deafness compelled him to retire. He settled for a time at Bath, but afterwards returned to Scarborough, and finally to London, where he died on 24 Jan. 1892. In spite of the physical disability just mentioned, he was a man of great social talent and of most agreeable manners. His wife, Lord Leighton's mother, was Augusta Susan, daughter of George Augustus Nash of Edmonton.
The young Frederic Leighton showed an early love for drawing and filled many books with his sketches, but these do not seem to have been of a kind to impress his family very profoundly, and his father, it must he said, disliked the idea of art as a profession. While the boy was still very young, his mother's delicate health gave him his first chance of seeing foreign countries. The family travelled abroad, and in the year 1839, before Frederic was ten years old, he found himself one day in the studio of George Lance in Paris. From this visit his father's acceptance of the idea that possibly nature had made the boy an artist appears to date. Dr. Leighton determined, however, that his choice should not be limited by any one-sided education. In London, Rome, Dresden, Berlin, Frankfort, and Florence, his education was pursued, with the result that, 'in one particular at least, it was vastly more thorough than usual with an English boy of I his condition. He became an accomplished linguist, speaking the four chief modern languages with almost equal facility. It was in Florence in 1844 that his profession was finally settled. Dr. Leighton consulted Hiram Power, the sculptor of 'The Greek Slave,' as to whether he should make his son an artist. 'Sir,' said Power, 'Nature has done it for you,' adding that the boy could become ' as eminent as he pleased.' (cont)