Frederic Leighton As a Collector of Contemporary Art

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'The Artistic Economy of the House': Frederic Leighton as a Collector of Contemporary Art

Thesis · August 2016 DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.15100.64649

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‘The Artistic Economy of the House’: Frederic Leighton as a Collector of Contemporary Art

Pola Durajska

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Letters in Art History: History of Collections and Collecting in the School of Culture and Creative Arts, University of Glasgow, 16 August 2016.

Words: 15,402

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Mr Daniel Robbins (Leighton House Museum) and Prof. Elizabeth Prettejohn (University of York) for their generous comments and sharing their work with me. Many thanks to the staff of the Watts Gallery, especially to Dr Beatrice Bertram for her incredible help and support, and to Mr Mark Pomeroy of the Royal Academy of Arts Archive. I am also very grateful to Dr John Bonehill (University of Glasgow) for his insightful comments on the many drafts, and to my academic supervisor, Dr Patricia de Montfort (University of Glasgow).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 4

Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 10

1. The Origins of the Silk Room …………………………………………………………………….…………………. 15

1.1. French Influence on Leighton ……………………………………………………..……………. 15 1.2. The Silk Room ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 16 1.3. The Academy and the Gallery ………………………………………………………………….. 18 1.4. Leighton and Collectors from His Circle …………………………….……………………… 21

2. ‘An Artist Among Artists’ ………………………………………………………….……………………………..….. 24

2.1. Rival ‘Palaces of Art’ ……………………………………………………………………….……….. 24

2.2. Watts and Burne-Jones ……………………………….……………………………….…………. 28

2.3. Collector in the Public Eye ………………………….………….……….……………..………… 31

3. Collector Artist …………………………………………………….………………………………………..….……….. 36

3.1. Leighton as a Virtuoso ………………………………..…..….………………………………….. 36

3.2. Artistic Exchanges ………………………………..…….………….………………..…………….. 38

Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………….. 42

Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………….………………………………….. 44

Illustrations ……………………………………………………………………………….……..……………………………. 54

List of Illustrations

Fig. 1. First floor plan of Leighton’s house in 1896. Source: http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofEnglish/visual-culture/painting/Leighton- House.html. Accessed June 23, 2016.

Fig. 2. George Aitchison, Design for the Elevation of a Wall of the Picture Gallery, 1895, watercolour. RIBA Collections, London. Source: https://www.architecture.com/image- library/RIBApix/image-information/poster/design-for-the-elevation-of-a-wall-of-the-picture- gallery-leighton-house-12-holland-park-road-london/posterid/RIBA4032.html. Accessed June 20, 2016.

Fig. 3. The Silk Room, photograph, 1895. Reproduced from: Closer to Home: The Restoration of Leighton House and Catalogue of the Reopening Displays 2010 (London: The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, 2010), 76.

Fig. 4. The Silk Room, 1895, photograph. Leighton House Museum, London. Source: https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/lhleightonhouse/housetour/silkroom.asp. Accessed July 5, 2016.

Fig. 5. After William Powell Frith, A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881, published 1885, photogravure, 47,5 x 90,8 cm. Royal Academy of Arts, London. Source: http://www.racollection.org.uk/ixbin/indexplus?_IXSESSION_=de0qjdpnyDs&_IXSR_=&_IXA CTION_=display&_MREF_=102925&_IXSP_=1&_IXFPFX_=templates/full/&_IXSPFX_=templat es/full/&_IXTRAIL_=Academicians. Accessed June 23, 2016. Fig. 6. Interior of the Grosvenor Gallery’s West Gallery, published in The Illustrated London News, 5 May 1877. Source: http://preraphaelitepaintings.blogspot.co.uk/2013_01_01_archive.html. Accessed July 5, 2016.

Fig. 7. Edward Burne-Jones, Chaucer’s Dream of Good Women, 1871, watercolour and gouache, 45,7 x 60,9 cm. Reproduced from: Oliver Garnett, ‘The Letters and Collection of William Graham – Pre-Raphaelite Patron and Pre-Raphael Collector,’ The Volume of the Walpole Society 62 (2000): 145-343.

Fig. 8. Anna Alma-Tadema, Drawing Room, 1a Holland Park, 1887, watercolour on paper, 27 x 18 cm. Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth, UK. Source: https://www.artrenewal.org/pages/artwork.php?artworkid=13440. Accessed July 5, 2016.

Fig. 9. Photograph of Lawrence Alma-Tadema in the Hall of Panels, published 1897. Reproduced from: M. H. Spielmann, ‘Laurence Alma-Tadema, R.A.: A Sketch,’ Magazine of Art (Jan 1897): 42-50.

Fig. 10. Photograph of Lawrence Alma-Tadema in the Hall of Panels, published 1911. Reproduced from: Rudolph de Cordova, ‘The Hall of Panels in the House of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, R.A.,’ Scribner’s Magazine (1911): 299-314.

Fig. 11. Lawrence Alma-Tadema, In My Studio, 1893, oil on canvas, 61.6 x 47 cm. Collection of Ann and Gordon Getty. Source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/sir-lawrence-alma-tadema/in- my-studio-1893. Accessed June 4, 2016.

Fig. 12. Plan of Alma-Tadema’s house’s ground floor. Reproduced from: Giles Walkley, Artists’ Houses in London 1764-1914 (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1994).

Fig. 13. Frederic Leighton, A Noble Lady of Venice, c. 1865, oil on canvas, 87,8 x 66,2 cm. Leighton House Museum, London. Source: http://artuk.org/discover/artworks/a-noble-lady- of-venice-180200. Accessed July 20, 2016.

Fig. 14. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Monna Rosa, 1867, oil on canvas, 69 x 53 cm. Private collection. Source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/dante-gabriel-rossetti/monna-rosa-1867. Accessed July 20, 2016.

Fig. 15. Valentine Cameron Prinsep, My Lady Betty, c. 1864, oil on canvas, 81.3 x 58.1 cm. Private collection. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:My_Lady_Betty_Valentine_Cameron_Prinsep.jpeg Accessed July 20, 2016.

Fig. 16. Frederic Leighton, Head of Young Girl, c. 1863. Reproduced from: Emilie Barrington, The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton, vol. 2 (London: George Allen, Ruskin House, 1906).

Fig. 17. Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Anna Alma-Tadema, 1883, oil on canvas, 112 x 76.2 cm. Royal Academy of Arts, London. Source: http://www.racollection.org.uk/ixbin/indexplus?_IXSESSION_=de0qjdpnyDs&_IXSR_=&_IXA

CTION_=display&_MREF_=20395&_IXSP_=1&_IXFPFX_=templates/full/&_IXSPFX_=template s/full/. Accessed July 20, 2016.

Fig. 18. Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Spring Flowers, 1911, oil on canvas, 24x18 cm. Private collection. Source: http://www.wikiart.org/en/sir-lawrence-alma-tadema/spring-flowers. Accessed July 19, 2016.

Fig. 19. George Frederick Watts, Study for Hope, c. 1885, oil on panel, 66 x 53.3 cm. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Source: http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/onlineshop/prints- posters/print-hope.aspx. Accessed July 12, 2016.

Fig. 20. George Frederick Watts, Patient Life of Unrequited Toil, 1890-1891, oil on canvas, 182.9 x 167.6 cm. Watts Gallery, Compton. Source: http://www.wattsgallery.org.uk/en- gb/collections/highlights-permanent-collection/#item-7844. Accessed July 12, 2016.

Fig. 21. After George Stubbs, The Anatomy of the Horse, c. 1815, etching. Private collection. Source: http://www.christies.com//lotfinder/lot/stubbs-george-the-anatomy-of-the- 1932451-details.aspx?from=searchresults&intObjectID=1932451&sid=a0ad4d05-0fee-4f73- 9608-0218886577cd. Accessed July 12, 2016.

Fig. 22. The drawing-room, 1 Holland Park, 1883-1884. Reproduced from: Charles Harvey, Jon Press, and Mairi Maclean, William Morris, Cultural Leadership, and the Dynamics of Taste.

Fig. 23. Edward Burne-Jones, Luna, 1872-1875, oil on canvas, 101 x 71 cm. Private collection. Source: http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/paintings/sir-edward-coley-burne-jones-bart- ara-rws-5157409-details.aspx. Accessed August 2, 2016.

Fig. 24. View of the Watts display at the Manchester Royal Jubilee Exhibition, 1887. Reproduced from: Representations of G. F. Watts: Art Making in Victorian Culture, ed. Colin Trodd and Stephanie Brown (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), fig. 14.

Fig. 25. Edward Burne Jones, The Annunciation, 1876-1879, oil on canvas, 98 x 44 cm. Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool. Source: http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/picture-of- month/displaypicture.aspx?id=14. Accessed June 25, 2016.

Fig. 26. Frederic Leighton, Lieder Ohne Worte, exhibited 1861, oil on canvas, 101.6 x 62.9 cm. Tate Britain, London. Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/leighton-lieder-ohne- worte-t03053. Accessed June 25, 2016.

Fig. 27. Edward Burne-Jones, Summer Snow, 1863, wood engraving on paper by the Dalziel Brothers, 14,6 x 10,8 cm. Tate Britain, London. Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/burne-jones-summer-snow-engraved-by-the-dalziel- brothers-n04047. Accessed July 12, 2016.

Fig. 28. Frederic Leighton, Odalisque, 1862, oil on canvas, 90.8 x 45.7 cm. Private collection. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1862_Frederick_Leighton_- _Odalisque.jpg. Accessed July 12, 2016.

Fig. 29. Edward Burne-Jones, Chaucer’s Dream of Good Women, 1865, watercolour. Private collection. Source: http://preraphaelitepaintings.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/edward-burne- jones-chaucers-dream-of.html. Accessed July 12, 2016.

Fig. 30. Frederic Leighton, At the Well (illustration for George Elliot’s Romola), 1863, wood engraving, 10,3 x 15,7 cm. Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland. Source: http://www.aucklandartgallery.com/explore-art-and-ideas/artwork/1208/at-the-well. Accessed August 2, 2016. Fig. 31. Raphael, Christ’s Charge to Peter, 1515-1516, gouache on paper, 340 x 530 cm. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum. Source: http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1069360/christs-charge-to-peter-matthew-cartoon-for- a-raphael/. Accessed August 2, 2016.

Fig. 32. The Antechamber at Leighton’s house, engraving, published 1882. Reproduced from: Barbara Bryant, ‘An Artist Collects: Leighton as a Collector of Paintings and Drawings,’ in Closer to Home: The Restoration of Leighton House and Catalogue of the Reopening Displays 2010 (London: Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, 2010).

Fig. 33. Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Maurice Sens, 1896, oil on canvas. Private collection. Source: http://www.alma-tadema.org/Maurice-Sens.html. Accessed July 12, 2016. Fig. 34. Lawrence Alma-Tadema, published 1895, photogravure, 20 x 16.9 cm. National Portrait Gallery, London. Source: http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw260243/Sir-Lawrence-Alma- Tadema?LinkID=mp00090&search=sas&sText=alma+tadema&wPage=1&role=sit&rNo=26. Accessed July 12, 2016.

Fig. 35. Studio recess at Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s 17 Grove End Road house, published in The Architect, May 31, 1889. Reproduced from: Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, ed. Edwin Becker (Zwolle: Waanders, 1996).

Fig. 36. Frederic Leighton, Pavonia, c. 1859, oil on canvas, 53 x 41.5 cm. Private collection. Source: http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/paintings/frederic-lord-leighton-pra-pavonia- 6011508-details.aspx. Accessed August 2, 2016.

Fig. 37. Valentine Cameron Prinsep, Leonora di Mantua, c. 1873, oil on canvas, 167.7 × 124 cm. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Source: http://www.the- athenaeum.org/art/detail.php?ID=110311. Accessed August 2, 2016.

Fig. 38. George Frederick Watts, A Study with the Peacock’s Feather, c. 1862-1865, oil on panel, 66 x 56 cm. Private collection. Source: https://artrenewal.org/pages/artwork.php?artworkid=4076&size=large. Accessed August 2, 2016.

Fig. 39. George Frederick Watts, Haystacks (Study on Brighton Downs), exhibited 1883, oil on canvas, 34.3 x 66 cm. Collection of Mr and Mrs Robert Kime. Source: http://www.artnet.com/artists/george-frederick-watts/haystacks-study-on-brighton-downs- Jm5vzs9WuXVbpLaxigmwSg2. Accessed August 2, 2016.

Fig. 40. Frederic Leighton, Clytie I, 1892. Leighton House Musuem, London. Source: https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/pdf/Between%20Life%20and%20Death%20- %20Text%20and%20Images.pdf. Accessed July 15, 2016.

Fig. 41. Frederic Leighton, Flaming June, 1895, oil on canvas, 120 x 120 cm. Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico. Source: http://www.frick.org/exhibitions/past/2015/flaming_june. Accessed July 15, 2016.

Fig. 42. Edward Burne-Jones, The Briar Rose Series: Garden Court, 1870-1890, oil on canvas, 125 x 231 cm. Buscot Park, Oxfordshire. Source: http://www.buscot-park.com/gallery/35. Accessed July 15, 2016.

Fig. 43. George Frederick Watts, Endymion, 1892, engraving. Source: http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/watts/graphics/1.html. Accessed July 15, 2016.

Fig. 44. George Frederick Watts, Thetis, c. 1870-1886, oil on canvas, 193 x 53.3 cm. Watts Gallery, Compton. Source: http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/watts/paintings/28.html. Accessed July 15, 2016.

Fig. 45. George Frederick Watts, Arcadia, 1878-1880, oil on canvas, 193 x 61 cm. Watts Gallery, Compton. Source: http://www.pre-raphaelite-brotherhood.org/Arcadia.html. Accessed July 15, 2016.

Fig. 46. Frederic Leighton, The Bath of Psyche, exhibited 1890, oil on canvas, 189.2 x 62.2 cm. Tate Britain, London. Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/leighton-the-bath-of- psyche-n01574. Accessed July 15, 2016.

Introduction

Frederic Leighton (1830-1896) is well-known as an Academic painter, President of the Royal Academy and as a socialite hosting recitals in his magnificent house at 2 Holland Park Road in London’s Kensington.1 Holland Park had a reputation as a cultured enclave, housing a number of prominent Victorian artists and patrons including George Frederick Watts (1817- 1904), Luke Fildes, and the Ionides and the Prinsep families.2 Before settling in London in 1859, Leighton had spent his youth in Italy, Germany and France, where he had trained under local artists. It is believed that ‘observing the houses occupied by the successful contemporary painters’ made him realise ‘the connection between professional success and house-building.’3 Leighton’s own residence, built and designed chiefly by George Aitchison, was completed in 1866, but underwent several extensions throughout years.4 The final addition was the Silk Room, a space designed with the display of paintings by Leighton’s contemporaries in mind. Like the rest of his interiors, it was widely covered by press: detailed descriptions were supplemented by reproductions of Aitchison’s original watercolour designs as well as photographs. Leighton’s house as a whole reflected the trend, started in the early 1880s, of magazines and journals featuring glimpses of artists’ homes.5 Such publicity situated the residences of London’s leading painters and sculptors in a long line of celebrated artist houses, which took in such notable precedents as Vasari’s Arezzo

1 The current address is 12 Holland Park Road.

2 See: Caroline Dakers, The Holland Park Circle: Artists and Victorian Society (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999).

3 Louise Campbell, ‘Decoration, Display, Disguise: Leighton House Reconsidered,’ in Frederic Leighton: Antiquity, Renaissance, Modernity, ed. Tim Barringer and Elizabeth Prettejohn (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), 268.

4 See: ‘History of the House,’ Leighton House Museum, https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/subsites/museums/leightonhousemuseum/aboutthehouse/aboutleightonh ouse/historyofthehouse.aspx (accessed July 30, 2016).

5 Dakers, The Holland Park Circle, 252. The boom of such publications, discussing the fashionable Aesthetic interiors, seems to have been somewhat instigated by the 1882 death of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, an important contributor to the movement: Jason Edwards, Alfred Gilbert’s Aestheticism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 86-87.

10 home or the Rubenshuis in Antwerp.6 In London, this tradition dates back to the eighteenth century and the members of the newly founded Royal Academy.7

The press emphasised both the design of Leighton’s house and his collections, formed largely during his extensive travels and with an eclectic coverage, in objects and origin. Scattered throughout the house, they earned Leighton a label of a ‘bric-à-brac hunter’8 but contrary to the common assumption that their distribution was merely a matter of aesthetics, Barbara Bryant has demonstrated that a narrative can be traced through the interiors.9 The ground floor contained the Library filled with ‘books, prints and drawings,’ representing the intellectual side of the creative process. According to Leighton, a true artist ‘must be a student of books, must have a knowledge far beyond the mere boundaries of his especial art.’10 The Arab Hall, decorated with exotic ceramics, embodied Leighton’s travels to the Middle East, which were further accentuated by the collection of Iznik plates displayed in the dining-room. The drawing-room presented the latest trends of the French school of landscape acquired by Leighton in Paris. The staircase exhibited an overview of his tastes, combining works by Reynolds and such contemporaries as Watts, Giovanni Costa or Alphonse Legros, as well as a copy of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Through the staircase one would reach the Antechamber, hung with Renaissance paintings. To the right was Leighton’s studio, where his own, mostly Greek, landscapes were lined up below the casts of the Parthenon frieze, in a display of fashionable Hellenism.11 Turning left, one would enter the

6 For more on the two artists’ houses see: Lina de Girolami Cheney, ‘Giorgio Vasari: Artist, Designer, Collector,’ in The Ashgate Research Companion to Giorgio Vasari, ed. David J. Cast, 42-89 (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2014); Frans Baudouin, ‘The Rubens House at Antwerp and the Chateau de Steen at Elewijt,’ in Rubens in Context: Selected Studies, 175-189 (Centrum Voor de Vlaamse Kunst van de 16e en de 17e Eeuw and Bai, 2005).

7 See: Giles Walkley, Artists’ Houses in London 1764-1914 (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1994).

8 Anne Anderson, ‘Bric-a-Brac Hunting for the Palace of Art,’ in Closer to Home: The Restoration of Leighton House and Catalogue of the Reopening Displays 2010, ed. Daniel Robbins, 14-21 (London: The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, 2010).

9 Barbara Bryant, ‘An Artist Collects: Leighton as a Collector of Paintings and Drawings,’ in Closer to Home, 29.

10 Virginia Butler, ‘An Hour at Sir Frederick Leighton’s,’ Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine 52 (1893): 465.

11 See: Stefano Evangelista, British Aestheticism and Ancient Greece: Hellenism, Reception, Gods in Exile (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

Silk Room, whose south wall was devoted almost entirely to paintings presented to Leighton by fellow artists.12 In Leighton’s 1895 biography, the Silk Room was described as an addition ‘which completes the artistic economy of the house’13 – a statement suggestive of the careful distribution of objects and pictures, with which Leighton set the stage for his public life as the leader of the art establishment. Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) described his theatrical approach to art as resulting from his love for the opera,14 which was evident also in his interiors, bringing to mind exotic lands and distant times as well as, through the display of artists past and present, demonstrating Leighton’s place both in art history and on the current London scene.

The latter occupied him greatly: ‘despite his taste for the art of the past, modern art was at the centre of Leighton’s personal and professional activities.’15 The recent re-evaluation of Leighton’s art, led by Elizabeth Prettejohn, has challenged the more conventional judgment of his paintings based on their Academic ‘fini,’ and re-assessed it as in some respects avant- garde.16 It has not, however, fully taken account of the exchanges with the artists from his closest circle, including Burne-Jones, Watts and Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912). As Martina Droth has observed,17 scholarship has tended to treat Leighton as an artist and as a

12 See: Daniel Robbins, ‘The Restored Interiors and Catalogue of the Reopening Displays,’ in Closer to Home, 68-84.

13 Ernest Rhys, Sir Frederic Leighton (London: George Bell and Sons, 1895), 52.

14 Burne-Jones Talking: His Conversations 1895-1898 Preserved By His Studio Assistant Thomas Rooke, ed. Mary Lago (London: John Murray, 1982), 119, 124.

15 Bryant, ‘An Artist Collects,’ 27.

16 Elizabeth Prettejohn argues that through Classicist mode Leighton channelled the innovative Aestheticism, its theory deriving from Hegel’s philosophy and Walter Pater’s interpretation of the Greek culture, see: Prettejohn, ‘The Modernism of Frederic Leighton,’ in English Art 1860-1914: Modern Artists and Identity, ed. David Peter Corbett and Lara Perry, 31-48 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000); Prettejohn, ‘The Classicism of Frederic Leighton,’ in Art for Art’s Sake: Aestheticism in Victorian Painting (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), 64-161. For a more general study of the relationship between Aestheticism and Modernism, see: Prettejohn, ‘From Aestheticism to Modernism, and Back Again,’ Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 19, no. (2006), http://doi.org/10.16995/ntn.440 (accessed July 8, 2016).

17 Martina Droth, ‘Leighton’s House: Art In and Beyond the Studio,’ Journal of Design History 24, no. 4 (2011): 342.

12 collector separately, and not considered his collection as an important context for many of his own works.18 The only focus on Leighton’s fine arts collection is an essay by Barbara Bryant, which gives a useful overview of the ways in which he acquired and displayed paintings and drawings.19 Analysis of the Silk Room as such has not been undertaken, however. To demonstrate the richness of such a detailed approach, this dissertation will examine the Silk Room contemporary display. Photographs taken in 1895 and descriptions of its south wall offer a highly suggestive way of exploring the hanging scheme and the selection of artists.20 Some paintings, such as Alma-Tadema’s In My Studio, have recently attracted increased attention as part of the upcoming exhibition Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity, which is to be held at Leighton House Museum between 7 July and 29 October 2017, but their place in the wider scheme has gone unexamined.21

This dissertation seeks to establish a connection between Leighton’s art and his collection of contemporary paintings (representing the medium of the highest importance to him), with a particular focus on the Silk Room’s design and hanging pattern. Another aim is to investigate the publicity around the artist and his collection as a factor in the selection of paintings presented to Leighton and in his decision regarding their display. The focus will be on works by three leading contemporary artists, who, though Academicians, like Leighton embraced principles associated with the Aesthetic movement: Chaucer’s Dream of Good Women by Burne-Jones, study for Hope by Watts and In My Studio (also known as In the Corner of My Studio) by Alma-Tadema. It is a selection which, roughly, spans the history of Leighton’s contemporary acquisitions, covering the time between the 1860s and the 1890s. The three

18 See such publications as: Campbell, ‘Decoration, Display, Disguise;’ Closer to Home; Anne Anderson, ‘The “New Old School’: Furnishing with Antiques in the Modern Interior – Frederic, Lord Leighton’s Studio-House, and Its Collections,’ Journal of Design History 24, no. 4 (2011): 315-338.

19 Bryant, ‘An Artist Collects.’

20 Such descriptions can be found in: Ernest Rhys, Fredric Lord Leighton (London: George Bell and Sons, 1900); George C. William, Frederic Lord Leighton (London: George Bell and Sons, 1902); Alice Corkran, Frederic Leighton (London: Methuen & Co., 1904); Emilie Barrington, The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton, vol. 2 (London: George Allen, Ruskin House, 1906); Edgcumbe Staley, Lord Leighton (London: The Walter Scott Publishing, 1906).

21 ‘Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity,’ Leighton House Museum, https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/subsites/museums/leightonhousemuseum/flamingjune/almatadema.aspx (accessed July 30, 2016).

13 painters and Leighton were connected by close-knit relations of a social and artistic nature, and all of the three titles were at some point recorded to have been among the presented pictures hanging in the Silk Room. A case-study approach is not only revealing of the thematic concerns of Leighton’s Silk Room, but helps situate his wider collecting practices in the context of modern art displays in the residences of his London contemporaries. It also provides a broader way of taking forward the critical discussion of art collecting and Victorian tastes in a more nuanced and detailed manner.22

This dissertation is divided into three main chapters. The first one provides the plausible background for Leighton’s Silk Room addition. It then studies its design and hanging scheme, by comparison with two popular London exhibition spaces that Leighton was involved in. The selection of paintings is also juxtaposed with the appropriate collections of members of Leighton’s circle. The second chapter investigates In My Studio, as it connected Leighton’s house with other ‘Palaces of Art.’ Next, the relationship of the collection to Leighton’s own artistic practice is examined, as well as artists statement revealed through the Silk Room display. The third chapter analyses Leighton’s emphasis on preparatory studies as indicative of the use he made of his collection.

22 This critical framework is built on such publications as: Russell W. Belk, ‘Collectors and Collecting,’ in Interpreting Objects and Collections, ed. Susan M. Pearce (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), 317-326; Dianne Sachko Macleod, ‘Art Collecting and Victorian Middle-Class Taste,’ Art History 10, no. 3 (September 1987): 328-350.

1. The Origins of the Silk Room

1.1. French Influence on Leighton

Leighton’s stays in Paris throughout the 1850s and 1860s were crucial to all his later activities. In 1855 he found himself in the orbit of such artists as Eugène Delacroix and William-Adolphe Bouguereau,23 whose studios are thought to have been direct models for Leighton’s.24 In Victorian England, studio-houses were still considered a novelty from Paris, adopted also by two other Royal Academicians known for their extraordinary ‘Palaces of Art’: Alma-Tadema and John Everett Millais.25 In Paris, Leighton studied under Ary Scheffer, whose ‘grander studio was the venue for musical parties, “in which the most famous singers and instrumentalists of the day used to take part.” Scheffer provided a model of the artist as a member of aristocratic society, and as a kindly patron of younger artists.’26 Indeed, Leighton seems to have emulated those musical events in his famed ‘musics’ held annually from 1867 until 1895.27 Similarly to Scheffer, he also supported the new generations of artists, including some avant-garde talents, which was unusual in the light of his devotion to the conservative Academy, but revealing of his own contribution to the equally innovative Aesthetic movement.28

Leighton’s astonishing open-mindedness was first marked by the purchases he made in Paris. Apart from works by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Delacroix, he returned with landscapes by the painters centred around the Barbizon school. Among them were Jean-

23 Butler, ‘An Hour at Sir Frederick Leighton’s,’ 464.

24 Dakers, The Holland Park Circle, 60.

25 Charlotte Gere, ‘Three Artists’ Studio-Houses in London: For Leighton, Millais and Alma-Tadema,’ in Closer to Home, 7.

26 Campbell, ‘Decoration, Display, Disguise,’ 272. For more on Leighton’s experience in Paris, see: Leonée and Richard Ormond, ‘Leighton in Paris,’ Apollo 97 (1973): 136-141.

27 Daniel Robbins and Reena Suleman, Leighton House Museum: Holland Park Road, Kensington (London: The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, 2005), 66.

28 See: Elizabeth Prettejohn, ‘Leighton: The Aesthete as Academic,’ in Art and the Academy in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Rafael Cordoso Denis and Colin Trodd, 33-52 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).

Baptiste-Camille Corot’s four panels illustrating the times of the day, which Leighton hung in the company of Delacroix in the drawing-room. Like the Silk Room, it was specifically ‘designed for the exhibition of’ those paintings,29 with which ‘Leighton alluded to his own continental background and his knowledge of contemporary art beyond London.’30 Leonée and Richard Ormond observed that, while Delacroix belonged to an already ‘outmoded tradition,’ the Barbizon school in Leighton’s collection was an early sign of his ‘far- sightedness,’ which recognised a value in works not only remarkably different from his own oeuvre, but also at this point remaining rather unnoticed by the British art world.31 His prophetical interest in those artists was shared only by his neighbour, Alexander Constantine Ionides. The collection of this great Pre-Raphaelite patron was assembled under the guidance of Legros,32 whose works Leighton displayed in his entrance hall and on the staircase.33

1.2. The Silk Room

In the 1890s, Leighton realised that he needed additional space to hang ‘the pictures and sketches’ presented to him by his fellow artists, so

‘another room was built over the library and adjacent to the old-painting room (fig. 1), the wall dividing them was removed, and its place supplied by black marble pilasters and monolithic columns of pavonazzetto with bases and carved capitals of black marble, an architrave of yellow Numidian marble, and a dolphin frieze. The new room was lit by a glass dome to match the other. A plain black marble chimney occupied the centre of the east side.’

29 Anonymous, ‘Artists’ Homes, No. 7 – Sir Frederick Leighton’s House and Studio,’ The Building News (Oct 1, 1880): 384.

30 Bryant, ‘An Artist Collects,’ 22.

31 Ormond, ‘Leighton in Paris,’ Apollo 97 (1973): 138-139. ‘The first commercial introduction of works by Barbizon school painters’ took place in 1848 in London, see: Thomas M. Bayer and John R. Page, The Development of the Art Market in England: Money As Muse, 1730-1900 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), 134 .

32 Dakers, The Holland Park Circle, 112.

33 Harry How, ‘Sir Frederick Leighton, P.R.A.,’ Strand Magazine (July 1892): 129.

The walls of the addition and the adjacent Antechamber, together forming a ‘picture gallery,’ were covered in ‘faded leaf-green silk.’34 This extension was designed by Aitchison and the construction began in the latter half of 1894. In March 1895 it was opened for Leighton’s final ‘music.’ The absence of evidence for the dolphin frieze other than Aitchison’s design (fig. 2) suggests that the Silk Room was never truly completed, possibly due to Leighton’s illness and stays abroad.35 Still, the project of converting the house to electricity was successfully carried out, and undoubtedly affected the perception of the paintings.36 Similarly, a curtain was installed, allowing for the separation of the Silk Room from the staircase.37 This must have enhanced a stage-like experience and an impression of being elevated above the “lay” street level.38 The Silk Room was thus connected only to Leighton’s studio, filled with his own paintings.

The spatial division of the ‘Picture Gallery’ reflected the chronological order of the works assembled there. Right outside the studio hung fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italian mostly religious paintings. The Antechamber featured also an oriental zenana offering a view into the Arab Hall, and a fireplace on the east wall, around which hung sixteenth-century Venetian Masters, represented chiefly by Jacopo Tintoretto (fig. 3). The 1895 photograph of the south wall (fig. 4) shows that at the centre was a large canvas by Millais, Shelling Peas (1889), flanked by Watts’ oil study for Hope (c. 1885) on the left, and Alma-Tadema’s In My Studio (1893) on the right. Above Hope hung Marie Cazin’s Shades of Evening (c. 1875), while next to In My Studio Giovanni Costa’s Brugnoletta in Noonday Repose (1858-1859), and above it: Watts’ A Venus. The next picture on the right, readable from the photograph, is John Singer Sargent’s study for a mural, Astarte (1893). From the part on the far left Albert

34 George Aitchison, ‘Picture Gallery, 2, Holland Park-Road,’ The Builder 9 (1895): 336.

35 There exists an account, however, that the frieze was painted white on Leighton’s order, see: Joanna Banham, Sally MacDonald, Julia Porter, Victorian Interior Design (New York: Crescent Books, 1991), 145.

36 Robbins and Suleman, Leighton House Museum, 27.

37 Robbins, ‘The Restored Interiors and Catalogue of the Reopening Display,’ 77.

38 The culture of spectacle regarding art displays was rooted in the eighteenth-century tradition, see: Rosie Dias, ‘ “A World of Pictures”: Pall Mall and the Topography of Display, 1780-1799,’ in Miles Ogborn and Charles Withers, Georgian Geographies: Space, Place and Landscape In the Eighteenth Century, 92-113 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).

Joseph Moore’s Dahlias were identified, and beneath them Cecil van Haanen’s Head of Venetian Girl.39 In addition, a recess was created in the east wall to accommodate a seventeenth-century tapestry with the coat of arms of English monarchs.40 The photograph of the south wall shows framed pictures also balancing on the sofa and chairs, which contributes to an effect of a less formal and more personalised space.

1.3. The Academy and the Gallery

Leighton’s presidential term at the Academy was considered incredibly successful already at the very beginning: the first Summer Exhibition he oversaw attracted the most paying visitors ever recorded.41 Leighton’s long-life devotion to this institution was in turn likely to influence his Silk Room display. There is not much evidence for his direct impact on the choice of all the works presented to him, but it certainly was his decision to hang them there and to apply any particular scheme to their distribution. The “art on the line” hanging pattern, practiced at the Academy since the eighteenth century, is here simplified to just two levels, with Hope and In My Studio on the lower one. At the Academy, paintings “on the line” would usually be the grandest ones, chiefly historic or portraits, while those below would be more “intimate,” meant for a closer study, as illustrated by the two gentlemen on the right in William Powell Frith’s A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881 (fig. 5), at the centre of which Leighton is shown conversing with influential members of society.

Millais’ Shelling Peas occupied the central point, which traditionally belonged to full-length portraits, yet it depicts a humble activity of an anonymous person and thus might be read as a deliberate play with the Academy’s standards. Still, on the whole the Silk Room shared with the Academy’s displays a sense of ‘pictorial rhyming,’ in which different genres were

39 I am indebted to Mr Daniel Robbins, Senior Curator of Leighton House Museum, for the identification of paintings in the Silk Room.

40 Robbins and Suleman, Leighton House Museum, 55.

41 Sidney C. Hutchison, The History of the Royal Academy 1768-1968 (London: Chapman & Hall, 1968), 138.

18 distributed in a way that visually connected them like a repeating pattern.42 What is more, Burlington House, to which the Academy moved at the time when Leighton became a Royal Academician, had been completely converted to electricity by 1894, the year in which the construction of the Silk Room began, accompanied by the introduction of electricity to Leighton’s house.43

Another institution that might serve as a daring comparison with the Silk Room is the Grosvenor Gallery, established in 1877 by Sir Coutts Lindsay as an ‘alternative’ to the Academy.44 Displaying works chiefly by such artists as James McNeill Whistler, Burne-Jones or Moore, the Gallery ‘became synonymous in the public mind with the Aesthetic movement,’45 but it also showed Academicians: among them Watts, Alma-Tadema and Leighton.46 Similarities between Leighton’s house and the Gallery can be found in the emphasis on the magnificent staircases leading to the main picture galleries, or in the latter’s incorporation of a Palladian doorway, which brings to mind exotic tiles and ceramics implemented in the Arab Hall, the construction of which began the same year as the Grosvenor’s. Both Leighton’s and the Gallery’s displays were lit by ‘skylight’ during the day, and by artificial one in the evening.47 The Grosvenor’s chief exhibition space, the West Gallery, ‘was aligned on a north-south axis’ and thus recalled the same layout of Leighton’s studio and the Silk Room.48 Most importantly, Coutts revolutionised the exhibition practice

42 Mark Hallett, ‘Reading the Walls: Pictorial Dialogue at the British Royal Academy,’ Eighteenth- Century Studies 37, no. 4 (2004): 585.

43 Hutchison, The History of the Royal Academy 1768-1968, 142.

44 Charlotte Gere with Lesley Hoskins, The House Beautiful: Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetic Interior (Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2000), 20. Just like Leighton, Lindsay studied in Paris under Ary Scheffer and was a friend of the opera singer Adelaide Sartoris: Christopher Newall, The Grosvenor Gallery Exhibitions: Change and Continuity in the Victorian Art World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 7.

45 Alison Inglis, ‘The Empire of Art,’ in The Victorian World, ed. Martin Hewitt (London and New York: Routlege, 2012), 595.

46 Gere with Hoskins, The House Beautiful, 47.

47 Electricity at the Grosvenor Gallery was installed as early as in 1883: Newall, The Grosvenor Gallery Exhibitions, 12.

48 Newall, The Grosvenor Gallery Exhibitions, 11.

19 by allowing sufficient space between the frames (fig. 6), as well as introduced innovative colour scheme.49 The walls of the Gallery were initially covered with red silk and a green velvet dado. However, after criticism the silk was changed to a greenish one.50 Similar link with Leighton’s ‘picture gallery’ provided also the green walls of the Grosvenor’s watercolour display.51 Although the Gallery had played only a minor role in Leighton’s career, he likely remembered the transition to a green colour scheme, indicated by the critics as more suitable for a display backdrop. Interestingly, for the studio presenting his own works Leighton always preferred terracotta-red walls.52

Burne-Jones also disliked the initial red scheme, arguing that it ‘sucks all the colour out of pictures.’ Instead, he advocated plain surroundings, sort of a ‘sublimated barn,’ with preferably ‘whitewashed walls.’ Patron William Graham shared his disregard for the Grosvenor’s decoration and consulted with him the design of his own interiors, meant to accommodate the commissioned paintings.53 To such Pre-Raphaelites as Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, issues regarding interior design were close through the connection with the Arts and Crafts philosophy, and often through direct collaboration.54 An interesting example is an 1864 letter to a prominent Rossetti patron, George Rae, in which the artist provided a sketch illustrating his vision for the outline of a group of works that he wished Rae to implement. Densely hung in gilded frames, they would offer an entirely different

49 Colleen Denney, ‘The Role of Sir Coutts Lindsay and the Grosvenor Gallery In the Reception of Pre- Raphaelitism On the Continent,’ in Pre-Raphaelite Art In Its European Context, ed. Susan P. Casteras and Alicia Craig Faxon, 75-76 (London: Associated University Press, 1995).

50 Frances Spalding, Magnificent Dreams: Burne-Jones and the Late Victorians (Oxford: Phaidon, 1978), 8.

51 Newall, The Grosvenor Gallery Exhibitions, 11.

52 Banham, MacDonald, Porter, Victorian Interior Design, 141.

53 Oliver Garnett, ‘The Letters and Collection of William Graham – Pre-Raphaelite Patron and Pre- Raphael Collector,’ The Volume of the Walpole Society 62 (2000): 167.

54 For instance, William Morris worked jointly with Burne-Jones and Philip Webb, see: Charles Harvey and Jon Press, William Morris: Design and Enterprise in Victorian Britain (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1991).

20 experience to Burne-Jones’ model,55 closer to the Silk Room’s colour scheme and hanging pattern.

1.4. Leighton and Collectors from His Circle

Leighton’s approach to his collection often situated him closer to patrons than other artists, as he built and expanded his house essentially with the purpose of displaying his precious pieces.56 The Silk Room addition housed works predominantly presented to Leighton by the artists themselves, which alone indicates his esteem as a patron. Similarly, Dianne Sachko Macleod observed that:

The collections of George Rae, William Graham, and Frederick Leyland are important from the point of view of their close connections with the painters of the Aesthetic movement. Each […] went to great lengths to produce a suitably harmonious setting in which to display his tributes to beauty.57

Singling out certain artworks and designing entire rooms around them was not only characteristic for wealthy Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic patrons, but also contributed to the success of William Morris’ company. Although Leighton is scarcely considered within the realm of the Arts and Crafts movement, he did have some common ground with its members. He was himself engaged in interior design, having established a prosperous collaboration with Aitchison and Walter Crane, with whom he worked on the home of Mr and Mrs Thomas Eustace Smith around 1875. 52 Princes Gate was close to Leyland’s number 49 and reflected similarly aesthetic taste of its owners. The Smiths’ collection, assembled in the 1860s and 1870s and, like in Leighton’s case – preceding the construction of their interiors, was perhaps not without an influence on Leighton’s own: the Smiths also purchased works by Watts, Burne-Jones, Moore, Legros and George Hemming Mason, whom

55 Julian Treuherz, ‘Aesthetes in Business: The Raes and D. G. Rossetti,’ The Burlington Magazine 146, no. 1210 (2004): 16.

56 To the need of such comparison points Campbell: Campbell, ‘Decoration, Display, Disguise,’ 285.

57 Sachko Macleod, ‘Art Collecting and Victorian Middle-Class Taste,’ 342. See also: Dianne Sachko Macleod, ‘Patronage of the Arts: F. G. Stephens’s “The Private Collections of England”,’ The Burlington Magazine 128, no. 1001 (1986): 597-607.

21 they displayed alongside Leighton and on pale-green walls.58 An interesting dialogue seems to have taken place between certain London interiors executed consecutively: Moore designed a peacock frieze in 1873 for Frederick Lehmann’s 15 Berkeley Square, as part of Aitchison’s decorative scheme.59 The architect later repeated the ebonized woodwork from Leighton’s house at 52 Princes Gate, which Whistler boasted to have ‘eclipsed’ with the Peacock Room he completed in 1877 for Leyland (who was Leighton’s friend and neighbour Valentine Cameron Prinsep’s father-in-law). To this, in turn, likely corresponded Leighton’s 1877-1881 Arab Hall,60 and a stuffed peacock in the Staircase Hall, accommodated there already in 1876.61

Leighton’s Silk Room display also demonstrated some parallels with those of Victorian collectors. William Graham in the 1860s and 1870s in his Grosvenor Place house juxtaposed Pre-Raphaelites with ‘Pre-Raphaels’ – early Renaissance artists that he bought for a fraction of what he paid for his contemporaries. Just like in Leighton’s case, they were usually supplied by the art dealer Charles Fairfax Murray.62 Leighton’s Italian painting occupied the wall opposite the Silk Room’s contemporary south end. As a result, a sort of antithesis was created, or rather a comparison between the newest achievements and the early modern tradition – a clearer reference was probably visible at Graham’s home, as the Pre-

58 Timothy Wilcox, ‘The Aesthete Expunged: The Career and Collection of T. Eustace Smith, MP,’ Journal of the History of Collections 5, no. 1 (1993): 43, 46-49.

59 Esmé Whittaker, ‘Leighton and Aitchison,’ in The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860- 1900, ed. Stephen Calloway and Lynn Federle Orr (London: V&A Publishing, 2011), 118-119.

60 'Princes Gate and Princes Gardens: the Freake Estate, Development by C.J. Freake,' in Survey of London: Volume 45, Knightsbridge, ed. John Greenacombe, 191-205 (London: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd, 2000), http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey- london/vol45/pp191-205 (accessed July 5, 2016); ‘The Peacock Room,’ The Smithsonian’s Museums of Asian Art, http://www.asia.si.edu/exhibitions/online/peacock/ (accessed July 3, 2016); ‘History of the House;’ Staley, Lord Leighton, 201. Some scholars argue for strong references (such as colour scheme) to Whistler throughout the house, see: Jason Edwards, ‘The Lessons of Leighton House: Aesthetics, Politics, Erotics,’ in Rethinking the Interior, c. 1876-1896: Aestheticism and Arts and Crafts, ed. Jason Edwards and Imogen Hart, 85-110 (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010).

61 Anne Anderson, ‘Lost Treasures, Lost Histories, Lost Memories: Reconstructing the Interiors of Lord Frederic Leighton’s Studio-House,’ Interiors 2, no. 1 (2011): 75.

62 Garnett, ‘The Letters and Collection of William Graham,’ 150; Robbins and Suleman, Leighton House Museum, 55.

Raphaelites took direct inspiration from Italy. Placing works even on the chairs, as seen in the 1895 photograph, is also reminiscent of Graham’s house, similarly ‘lined up with them in every room from floor to ceiling,’63 and thus “portrays” Leighton as a passionate and generous patron rather than the President of the Royal Academy. His personal taste as a strong factor in the forming of his collection is additionally revealed by a high number of drawings by Burne-Jones, who had a rough relationship with the institution. An intriguing link to Graham’s collection is the watercolour Chaucer’s Dream of Good Women, of which Burne-Jones created two versions. Leighton owned the 1865 one, while Graham the one from 1871,64 in which Chaucer bends towards the fountain (fig. 7). Although there is no direct evidence, it is possible that Graham first saw the watercolour at Leighton’s and commissioned a second version.65

Another collection similarly juxtaposing Old Masters with contemporary painters was formed by Leighton’s neighbours and patrons of Watts and Burne-Jones – the Ionides family, at 1 Holland Park. Alexander Constantine and his son Alexander (Alecco) throughout the 1860s and 1870s assembled works by Victorian artists and the Barbizon school, as well as Tanagra figurines and antique ceramics – a description perfectly fitting Leighton’s own collection. As the Ionides house was already ‘stunning’ in 1864, it is possible that it influenced his choice of neighbourhood and perhaps even the range of collected items. Although the house, taken over by Alecco in 1875, was re-decorated in the ‘Anglo-Japanese’ style,66 it shared an overall oriental feel with Leighton’s residence next door. The Aesthetic mode in its most exquisite form was also to be found at another Greek house nearby, the Coronio family’s 1a Holland Park. A corner of their jewel-like drawing-room, with a Rossetti painting and green Morris wallpaper, was depicted by Anna, daughter of Alma-Tadema, in 1885 (fig. 8). She also drew several watercolours of the Alma-Tadema’s Townshend House in

63 Garnett, ‘The Letters and Collection of William Graham,’ 151.

64 Ibid., cat. b5.

65 Graham commissioned it in 1870 and paid £100, see: ibid., 253.

66 Charles Harvey and Jon Press, ‘The Ionides Family and 1 Holland Park,’ The Journal of the Decorative Arts Society 1850 – the Present 18 (1994): 3-6.

1884-1885, right before her family moved to Grove End Road.67 Both houses were crucial to Lawrence’s art, which is exemplified by the painting he presented to Leighton, In My Studio.

Chapter 2: ‘An Artist Amongst Artists’68

2.1. Rival ‘Palaces of Art’

The houses of Leighton and Alma-Tadema were considered ‘two most famous of the artists’ residences’ and ‘two of the finest homes in England.’69 They also demonstrated how the publicity of their interiors offered a tool for expressing their artistic statements – Leighton displayed works by other artists, while Alma-Tadema surrounded himself with objects he depicted as attributes of everyday life in ancient Rome. Interestingly, ‘Casa Tadema’ at Grove End Road repeated ‘on a larger and more sumptuous scale the beauties of the earlier residence.’70 From Townshend House Alma-Tadema brought along such distinct pieces as the intricate window made of Mexican onyx, which he installed in the recess of his new studio.71 Echoes of the previous house could also be found in the notable Hall of Panels, to which artist friends made their contributions around 1886: several depictions of Townshend House by female painters were part of the forty five works that ‘represented the sort of comradeship which existed among the brotherhood of artists.’72 The emphasis of the close

67 Gere with Hoskins, The House Beautiful, 55.

68 Droth, ‘Leighton’s House,’ 346.

69 Joseph Frank Lamb, Lions in their Dens: Lord Leighton and Late Victorian Studio Life (PhD thesis, University of California, 1987), 11.

70 Helen Zimmern, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, R. A. (London: George Bell & Sons, 1902), 13.

71 Vern G. Swanson, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema: The Painter of the Victorian vision of the Ancient world (London: Ash & Grant, 1977), 24.

72 Swanson, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 24. See also the reproductions in: Rudolph de Cordova, ‘The Panels in Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s Hall,’ The Strand Magazine 24, no. 144 (1902): 615-630.

24 relations between Alma-Tadema and the Hall of Panels’ contributors is analogical to that made by Leighton by building the Silk Room specifically for the works presented to him.

Leighton himself painted a panel with The Bath of Psyche, a larger version of which he completed in 1890.73 Alma-Tadema was clearly pleased with the result – two photographs taken within a span of many years show him admiring the panel closely (fig. 9 and 10). Yet Alma-Tadema’s In My Studio (fig. 11), considered as a means of reciprocation for Leighton’s gift of The Bath of Psyche, was created much later and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1893.74 Leighton’s diary entries from the beginning of that year show an increased number of meetings with Alma-Tadema and Aitchison, suggesting perhaps the initial phase of plans for the Silk Room.75 Aitchison, Leighton’s architect, might have been already working on the Silk Room addition, constructed in the following year. Regarded by some as ‘a reaction to’ the Hall of Panels in the concept of devoting private interiors to the display of fellow artists, and similarly adjacent to the studio (fig. 12), the Silk Room might have prompted Alma- Tadema to create an appropriate representation of himself.76 His biographer’s claim that In My Studio was ‘painted for the late Lord Leighton’77 points further to the possibility of it having been created precisely for the Silk Room.

The painting reveals both the differences and parallels between the art of Alma-Tadema and Leighton.78 Both collaborated in the decoration of Henry Marquand’s New York home in the

73 See: ‘The Bath of Psyche,’ Tate Britain, http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/leighton-the-bath-of- psyche-n01574 (accessed July 2, 2016).

74 Elizabeth Prettejohn, ‘In Mijn Atelier,’ in Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, ed. Edwin Becker (Zwolle: Waanders, 1996), 250.

75 Royal Academy of Arts Archive, accession number LEI/43.

76 Lamb, Lions in their Dens, 145.

77 Percy Cross Standing, Lawrence Alma-Tadema (London: Cassell and Company, 1905), 99.

78 For similarities between Leighton’s and Alma-Tadema’s painting, see for instance: Anne-Florence Gillard-Estrada, ‘Between the Olympian and the Dionysian: Pagan Energy in Paintings by Frederic Leighton and Lawrence Alma-Tadema,’ Cahiers Victoriens Et Edouardiens 80 (Autumn 2014), https://cve.revues.org/1507 (accessed July 9, 2016).

1880s, in the organisation of which Alma-Tadema acted as ‘the intermediary,’79 and during which he might have familiarised himself with Leighton’s methods. Friendship with the latter was beneficial also financially – Alma-Tadema’s prices, as those of ‘a wide spectrum of English painters,’ increased under Leighton’s leadership of the Academy,80 and it does not seem to be a mere coincidence that he became a full Academician a year into Leighton’s Presidency.81 Analysis of In My Studio suggests that it might have referenced Leighton’s oeuvre in several aspects. Its composition includes an archaically dressed model, seen in left profile and smelling white roses in a glass vase, which brings to mind Leighton’s A Noble Lady of Venice (fig. 13). That painting belongs to a series of aestheticized depictions from the 1860s, presenting similarly dressed and posed women: Rossetti’s portrait of Leyland’s wife (fig. 14) and Prinsep’s My Lady Betty (fig. 15). Closer to In My Studio in the historicised clothing and headdress, is meanwhile Leighton’s Head of Young Girl (fig. 16), the artist’s wedding gift for the Prince of Wales (married in 1863).

Alma-Tadema often returned to the subject of women holding up or smelling flower vases.82 Particularly relevant to the discussion of In My Studio are the portrait of his daughter of 1883 (Fig. 17) and Spring Flowers of 1911 (fig. 18). The former shows Anna posing within Townshend House,83 whose lavish interiors filled with exotic textiles and antiquities she herself depicted around that time in watercolour. Spring Flowers, meanwhile, repeats the formula of In My Studio: a model standing en profil in the recess of Alma-Tadema’s studio and holding a vase full of flowers.

In a way, In My Studio seems to convey somewhat of a rivalry, or rather a vivid comparison, between Leighton’s and Alma-Tadema ‘Palaces of Art.’84 The phrase, coined by Alfred

79 Richard Ormond, ‘Leighton and His Contemporaries,’ in Frederic Leighton 1830-1896, ed. Phyllis Freeman, 21-40 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 39. 80 Swanson, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 23.

81 Zimmern, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, R. A., 17.

82 For instance in Woman and Flowers (1868) and Flag of Truce (1900).

83 ‘Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema RA (1836-1912),’ Royal Academy of Arts, 2011, http://www.racollection.org.uk/ixbin/indexplus?record=ART3854 (accessed July 10, 2016).

84 See: Gere, ‘Three Artists’ Studio-Houses in London,’ 6-13.

Tennyson’s poem,85 began to be applied to the opulent studio-houses of the second half of the nineteenth century, of which 2 Holland Park and 17 Grove End Road were considered the most exquisite examples. Yet, unlike in Leighton’s case, Alma-Tadema’s interiors often inspired the settings for his paintings. The appeal of his version of a Pompeian villa was especially strong among other classicising artists. John William Waterhouse, for instance, incorporated Alma-Tadema’s studio apse in his Mariamne (1887, Forbes Magazine Collection).86 Prettejohn points out that Alma-Tadema’s emphasis on assiduously depicted surroundings, as seen in In My Studio, betrays his Dutch background and the tradition of seventeenth-century masters.87 In comparison, the only instance of Leighton’s house as an identifiable setting for his own art are Sun-Gleams (The Arab Hall), painted a year after Alma- Tadema’s portrait of Anna in Townshend House.88

While both Leighton and Alma-Tadema installed curtains between certain rooms, this trick for ‘revealing or concealing views’89 at Holland Park was used to enhance the experience of the house tours Leighton offered his visitors, whereas at Grove End Road it served the artist who could manipulate space into new arrangements. Overall, In My Studio worked as Alma- Tadema’s statement of a dramatically different approach to his studio-house from that of Leighton’s. It also functioned as a ‘window’ into his ‘Palace of Art,’ advertising the opulent studio recess that, with its Mexican onyx, a brass step, gilded textiles and a tiger skin, was

85 Alfred Tennyson, The Palace of Art, first published in 1833.

86 See: A Victorian Obsession, 67.

87 See: Prettejohn’s essay for the catalogue of the upcoming exhibition Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity (Leighton House Museum, 7 July – 29 October 2017).

88 Lamb, Lions in Their Dens, 271. For more comparison of Leighton’s and Alma-Tadema’s artistic use of their interiors, see Robbins’s essay for the catalogue of the upcoming exhibition Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity.

89 Elizabeth Prettejohn, ‘Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema: Studio-House, Grove End Road, London,’ in In The Temple of the Self: The Artist’s Residence as a Total Work of Art: Europe und America 1800-1948, ed. Margot Th. Brandlhuber and Michael Buhrs (Munich: Museum Villa Stuck, 2013), 115.

27 representative not only of its surroundings, but also of numerous other paintings featuring those elements.90

2.2. Watts and Burne-Jones

The ‘picture gallery’ of Leighton’s closest friend, Watts, preceded both the Silk Room and the Hall of Panels. Aitchison, who had worked not only on 2 Holland Park, but also on Alma- Tadema’s Townshend House after its destruction in 1874,91 added ‘a top-lit picture gallery’ to Watts’ studio-house in Melbury Road in 1879.92 The room, displaying Watts’ such allegorical paintings as The Rider on the White Horse (c. 1878, location unknown) on red walls,93 was opened in 1881 and available to public on the weekends.94 Unlike Alma-Tadema and Leighton, Watts therefore exhibited his own works (which he had decided to present to the nation). Similarly, his half-scale oil sketch for the first version of Hope (fig. 19), on Leighton’s Silk Room wall promoted all three variations of that subject to a potentially wider audience.95 Leighton’s and Watts’ friend and biographer Emilie Barrington listed Hope among the paintings in which, in her mind, ‘the deepest and innermost nature of Watts’ genius was recorded.’96 Yet even with his innovative approach, he was still seeking

90 For instance, Alma-Tadema often depicted the tiger skin: Swanson, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 130. Meanwhile, the model’s dress appears in another painting from the same year, Unconscious Rivals.

91 Prettejohn, ‘Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema,’ 115.

92 Banham, Macdonald, Porter, Victorian Interior Design, 138.

93 Mark Bills, ‘Watts Gallery: A Temple of Art in Rural England,’ in Mark Bills and Barbara Bryant, G. F. Watts: Victorian Visionary (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), 8.

94 Lamb, Lions in their Dens, 213-214.

95 The original painting (private collection) was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1886, and was followed by a replica presented to the Tate Gallery in 1897. In 1891 a smaller version was completed (Yale Center for British Art). See the following catalogue entries: Barbara Bryant, ‘Hope c. 1885-6,’ in Bills and Bryant, G. F. Watts, 220-223; ‘Hope 1886,’ Tate Britain, http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/watts-hope-n01640 (accessed July 16, 2016) and ‘Hope,’ Yale Center for British Art, http://collections.britishart.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3488294 (accessed July 16, 2016).

96 Emilie Barrington, G. F. Watts: Reminiscences (London: George Allen, 1905), 33.

28 inspiration in other contemporary sources. Hope is thought to derive its composition from Rossetti’s Roman Widow (1874, Puerto Rico, Museo de Arte de Ponce), a study of which Watts owned, and A Sea Spell (1877, private collection), which he must have seen at Leyland’s.97 Hope’s bandaged eyes are believed to reference Burne-Jones’ equally allegoric The Wheel of Fortune (1871-1875, Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria), also owned once by Watts,98 who had been Burne-Jones’ teacher.99 Meanwhile, the archaic type of lyre resembles the one in Burne-Jones’ Hymaneus (1869, Delaware, Delaware Art Museum).

The example of Watts shows that there is a tangible connection between an artist’s fine arts collection and their own works. This perhaps extends even further – to the collections of their circle. For instance, Watts’ Patient Life of Unrequited Toil (fig. 20) is evocative of a print after George Stubbs owned by Leighton (fig. 21). Although his bookplate bears the date 1895,100 a similar study was a part of Charles Landseer’s collection bequeathed to the Royal Academy in 1879.101 Moreover, Hope might have also derived from the house of other Watts’ neighbour. The drawing-room of the Ionides family (fig. 22), whom Watts had known and painted since the 1840s,102 displayed Burne-Jones’ Luna (fig. 23), which was first exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1878, initiating the composition of ‘a female figure seated on a globe’ and floating in a misty atmosphere.103 This example demonstrates the importance of other private displays of contemporary art as the context for Leighton’s Silk Room. Another interesting reference might have also been the Manchester Royal Jubilee

97 Barbara Bryant, ‘G.F. Watts and the Symbolist Vision,’ in The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Watts: Symbolism in Britain 1860-1910, ed. Andrew Wilton and Robert Upstone, 67-68 (London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1997).

98 ‘Hope 1886.’

99 Fiona MacCarthy, The Last Pre-Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Imagination (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), 93-94.

100 ‘Sale 6417, Lot 91,’ Christie’s, http://www.christies.com//lotfinder/lot/stubbs-george-the- anatomy-of-the-1932451-details.aspx?from=searchresults&intObjectID=1932451&sid=a0ad4d05- 0fee-4f73-9608-0218886577cd (accessed July 16, 2016).

101 Hutchison, The History of the Royal Academy 1768-1968, 142.

102 Barrington, G. F. Watts, 25.

103 ‘Sale 1209, Lot 91,’ Christie’s, http://www.christies.com/lotfinder/paintings/sir-edward-coley- burne-jones-bart-ara-rws-5157409-details.aspx (accessed July 16, 2016).

Exhibition of 1887, where Hope occupied the centre of the wall, while Watts’ 1871 portrait of Leighton (borrowed from his staircase) hung below, directly on its diagonal (fig. 24), thus providing a link to Leighton as the owner of Hope’s oil study.

While Leighton’s friendship with Watts accounts for his ownership of such paintings as Hope and A Venus, it is rather puzzling that Leighton had as many as five drawings and studies by Burne-Jones (comparing to one by Watts) due to their differences on artistic and professional ground.104 Burne-Jones was elected to the Academy much against his own will and soon (in 1893) abandoned it, causing the President ‘pain and distress.’105 In his recollections after Leighton’s death, Burne-Jones disapproved of the President’s art as often void of narrative, and strongly criticised his interiors.106 The number of his works in Leighton’s collection suggests, meanwhile, that the latter was more open to his art, as was indicated by inviting Burne-Jones to a collaboration at a church in Lyndhurst in 1862 (Burne- Jones designed the stained glass window above Leighton’s The Wise and Foolish Virgins fresco),107 as well as giving him a commission for The Sirens (1875, private collection).108 In addition, Leighton ‘had always intended to give Crane and Burne-Jones a free hand to cover the inside of the Arab Hall dome with mosaics.’109

It seems, however, that Burne-Jones’ criticism did not interfere with Leighton’s influence surfacing in his own works. His The Annunciation (fig. 25) and Leighton’s Lieder Ohne Worte

104 Catalogue of the Remaining Works and the Collection of Ancient & Modern Pictures and Water- Colour Drawings of the Late Right Honourable Lord Leighton of Stretton (London: Christie, Manson & Woods, 1896), 21-23.

105 MacCarthy, The Last Pre-Raphaelite, 369. For more on Leighton’s relations with fellow artists, see: Daniel Robbins, ‘Always Alone, Never Solitary: Frederic Leighton and his Contemporaries,’ in A Victorian Obsession: The Perez Simon Collection at Leighton House Museum, ed. Daniel Robbins, 25- 33 (London: Royal Borough of Chelsea and Kensington, 2014) .

106 Burne-Jones Talking, 102.

107 Leonée and Richard Ormond, Lord Leighton (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1975), 52.

108 MacCarthy. The Last Pre-Raphaelite, 421.

109 Walkley, Artists’ Houses in London 1764-1914, 226.

(fig. 26), appreciated by Rossetti,110 share similarly planned out compositions as well as subtle gradation of light and shadow. Another early example is Burne-Jones’ Summer Snow (fig. 27), evocative of Leighton’s Odalisque (fig. 28) in the pose of the female protagonist, similarly leaning on a tall wall, and whose vertical line is analogically reflected by a slender tree. Compositional affinity can also be observed between Chaucer’s Dream of Good Women (fig. 29) and Leighton’s At the Well (fig. 30), preceding the former by two years. Both works, in the monumental treatment of figures and heavy draperies, recall not only Millais’ illustrations of the early 1860s,111 but also Raphael’s cartoons for the Sistine chapel tapestries (fig. 31),112 which most likely were the main source for all three painters. Aitchison and Leighton’s early biographers list Chaucer’s Dream among the works presented to him by the artists,113 whereas Bryant states that he bought it in 1865, along with two other drawings.114 Similar version is accepted by the Ormonds, who add that ‘a study of a woman seated in a landscape’ was purchased in the previous year.115 Discrepancies exist also with regard to the location of the work within Leighton’s house.

2.3. Collector in the Public Eye

Using the example of the Royal Academy exhibitions, Mark Hallett points out that ‘we can read the wall as a sensitive barometer of the respective reputations of artists and of their

110 Corkran, Frederic Leighton, 47.

111 The Ormonds point such similarities between Leighton’s and Millais’ illustrations: Ormond, Lord Leighton, 59.

112 In the nineteenth century, the cartoons were often copied by art students in London, and in 1865 Queen Victoria sent them on loan to the South Kensington Museum (now Victoria and Albert Museum): ‘The Raphael Cartoons,’ Victoria and Albert Museum, http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/raphael-cartoons/ (accessed July 2, 2016).

113 Aitchison, ‘Picture Gallery, 2, Holland Park-Road,’ 336; Corkran, Frederic Leighton, 173; Rhys, Frederic Lord Leighton, 91; Williamson, Frederic Lord Leighton, 44.

114 Bryant, ‘An Artist Collects,’ 22. Bryant also calls the work a ‘gouache.’

115 Ormond, Lord Leighton, 52.

31 institutional allegiances and relationships.’116 Though it describes the eighteenth-century Academy, Leighton was known for his interest in its first President, Joshua Reynolds and kept an engraving after his work on his studio table,117 thus accentuating his artistic affiliation. Similarly, paintings by Reynolds, Francis Grant and Thomas Lawrence hung at his Holland Park house situated Leighton in ‘a lineage of academic leadership and academic painting.’118

This institutional environment was also highlighted by the Silk Room display. At its centre was the large canvas by Millais, who succeeded Leighton as President in 1896. Shelling Peas was an exchange for Leighton’s sculpture Needless Alarms (1886, Leighton House Museum), admired by Millais.119 The painting, bearing an 1889 dedication for Leighton, initially hung in the Antechamber,120 where Watts’ A Venus had been displayed already in the early 1880s (fig. 32). In the Silk Room, Millais’ work was flanked by Watts and Alma-Tadema – all fellow Academicians.121 Interestingly, Leighton truly appreciated the latter artists, while of Millais he was sometimes critical in terms of subject and composition.122

The apparent disjunction between Leighton’s personal tastes and the Silk Room display, dominated by Shelling Peas, proves that it was largely informed by the institutional hierarchy. Indeed, while there were landscapes and a still life by non-Academicians, these three artists were vividly highlighted. This might have been Leighton’s attempt to marry the two opposite sides of his life – the ‘academic’ with the ‘aesthetic.’123 Perhaps the

116 Hallett, ‘Reading the Walls,’ 586.

117 Butler, ‘An Hour at Sir Frederick Leighton’s,’ 464.

118 Droth, ‘Leighton’s House,’ 345. Moreover, it seems that Leighton might have posed himself against a column in the c. 1890 photograph (National Portrait Gallery) so as to resemble the portrait studies painted by Reynolds and Grant from his collection, not just to indicate his role as a ‘pillar’ of society.

119 Corkran, Frederic Leighton, 116.

120 How, ‘Sir Frederick Leighton, P. R. A.,’ 133.

121 Even though Watts expressed some criticism of the Academy’s hermeticism, he did not cause a scandal comparable to Burne-Jones: Spalding, Magnificent Dreams, 22.

122 Leighton judged Millais’ 1887 painting as a ‘dreadfully theatrical & tasteless Hugenot subject,’ see Leighton’s letter to Watts, 9 April 1887, Leighton House Museum.

123 See: Prettejohn, ‘The Classicism of Frederic Leighton,’ 131.

32 controversy surrounding Burne-Jones’ resignation from the Academy led Leighton to exclude Chaucer’s Dream from the public rooms of his house. Shortly after Leighton’s death the watercolour was reported to hang in his modest bedroom on the wall opposite the fireplace, accompanied mainly by photographs of Renaissance masterpieces.124 Leighton’s early biographers, however, place Chaucer’s Dream in the Silk Room,125 which is rather unlikely given the photographs taken during Leighton’s lifetime. Still, it is plausible that the watercolour was simply relocated at some point.

The importance of displaying appropriate works at 2 Holland Park was high due to the enormous publicity it received. The right impression was crucial to Leighton as President of the Academy, and his house was a significant factor in building the desired image – after all, ‘the carefully-considered decoration promoted the artist as possessor of taste and expertise.’126 Because of his responsible position, it was anticipated of Leighton to live up to certain standards: ‘as a leader in the world of art he was expected to lead an exemplarily life; his studio-house was required to be a model of refined taste.’127 This included his social life, for which 2 Holland Park was so recognisable: fellow Academicians were invited to ‘formal and informal dinners’,128 while patrons and collectors gathered on ‘Show Sundays’ and musical soirées,129 attended regularly also by Burne-Jones, Watts and Alma-Tadema.130 The fact that also the Ionides family next door held an open house every Sunday created perhaps some sort of competition between the two great, and in many ways similar, collections.131

124 A. G. T., ‘The Late Lord Leighton’s Bedroom,’ The Art Journal (Dec 1896): 364.

125 Corkran, Frederic Leighton, 173; Rhys, Frederic Lord Leighton, 91; Williamson, Frederic Lord Leighton, 44.

126 Gere, ‘Three Artists’ Studio-Houses in London,’ 7.

127 Anderson, ‘Lost Treasures, Lost Histories, Lost Memories,’ 71.

128 Corkran, Frederic Leighton, 152.

129 Kate Bailey, ‘Leighton – Public and Private Lives: Celebrity and the Gentleman Artist,’ Apollo 143, no. 408 (1996): 22.

130 Robbins, ‘Always Alone, Never Solitary,’ 33.

131 Harvey and Press, ‘The Ionides Family and 1 Holland Park,’ 3.

Alma-Tadema too presided over a busy household, holding ‘At Homes’ and weekly concerts.132 To him, music was as vital as to Leighton, who would often depict music-induced reveries.133 Intended perhaps as a sort of tribute to the President, whose favourite musician regularly performing at his home was the violinist Joseph Joachim,134 Alma-Tadema’s 1896 painting of Maurice Sens (fig. 33), playing the violin in the recess known from In My Studio, with its unusually tall canvas recalls the narrow works in the Hall of Panels.

During ‘musics’ and ‘At Homes,’ Leighton’s ‘house was on display and callers had the freedom to explore the interiors and collections.’135 Attended even by the Prince of Wales,136 Leighton’s parties attracted such patrons as the Wyndhams, whose choice of contemporary artists including Mason and Costa (as well as Corot and Daubigny) was influenced by the host’s collection.137 2 Holland Park can therefore be considered as a ‘salesroom,’138 promoting especially young artists, whom Leighton not only advertised to collectors,139 but also supported himself.140 As an advertisement similarly functioned Alma-Tadema’s Hall of

132 Campbell, ‘Decoration, Display, Disguise,’ 285.

133 The relationship between music and painting was exemplary of the Aesthetic movement: Elizabeth Prettejohn, ‘Walter Pater and Aesthetic Painting,’ in After the Pre-Raphaelites: Art and Aestheticism in Victorian England, ed. Prettejohn (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 41.

134 Michael Musgrave, ‘Leighton and Music,’ in Frederic Leighton: Antiquity, Renaissance, Modernity, 301-302.

135 Robbins and Suleman, Leighton House Museum, 65. Such events ‘created an effective network of contacts between artists, architects and designers and their potential patrons’: Caroline Dakers, Clouds: The Biography of a Country House (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993), 29.

136 Lamb, Lions in their Dens, 164.

137 Dakers, The Holland Park Circle, 126.

138 Droth, ‘Leighton’s House,’ 341.

139 Dakers, Clouds, 32.

140 See: Anna Greutzner Robins, ‘Leighton: A Promoter of the New Painting,’ in Frederic Leighton: Antiquity, Renaissance, Modernity, 315-330. Leighton generously bought from such artists and sometimes gave them additional financial support: Dakers, The Holland Park Circle, 201.

Panels, ‘a charming tribute to the master’s invincible popularity,’ which to the displayed artists meant sought-after publicity.141

The key medium, through which interiors and collections could reach wide and varied audiences, was press. The fact that ‘publicity was a crucial ingredient for success,’ making an artist desirable, and that the print market could impact careers was what Alma-Tadema knew well.142 In My Studio can be considered as a clever marketing strategy, which combined the right timing with repetition. In 1894, when the Silk Room’s construction was already in progress, a photogravure of the painting was published in London, Berlin and New York.143 Even more suggestive is the photograph of Alma-Tadema in the studio recess, which replicates the angle from which In My Studio was painted (fig. 34). Published in 1895 by the Berlin Photographic Company,144 it makes a direct reference to the picture hanging already in the Silk Room, and to Alma-Tadema’s artistic use of his magnificent studio. The recess could be admired by large audiences already in 1889, in a series of photographs documenting 17 Grove End Road published by The Architect (fig. 35).

The architectural focus of many articles on Alma-Tadema’s and Leighton’s interiors signifies their treatment as sources of inspiration in terms of design and collection display. Leighton’s influence reached even the Continent, as traceable in the Brussels villa of Fernand Khnopff: a stuffed peacock and Leighton’s The Sluggard (c. 1882-86) were to be found alongside a reproduction of Burne-Jones’ The Wheel of Fortune.145 Leighton’s popularity extended also to his collection, as he ‘possessed important works of art and his ownership bestowed a valuable cachet.’ This resulted in the purchase of many items after his death by fellow

141 Standing, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 42-43.

142 Bayer and Page, The Development of the Art Market in England, 126, 131.

143 ‘In the Corner of My Studio,’ The British Museum, http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId= 1656839&partId=1&searchText=alma-tadema&page=1 (accessed July 18, 2016).

144 ‘Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema,’ National Portrait Gallery, http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw260243/Sir-Lawrence-Alma- Tadema?LinkID=mp00090&search=sas&sText=alma+tadema&wPage=1&role=sit&rNo=26 (accessed July 18, 2016).

145 See the photographs reproduced in: In The Temple of the Self, 232.

35 artists,146 with In My Studio reaching the highest price for a single painting, while Chaucer’s Dream being unexpectedly expensive for a non-oil.147 As Martina Droth has summarised, ‘to situate Leighton in his house is to situate him socially, not artistically. Collector, connoisseur, tastemaker, socialite, showman, President, patron, philanthropist and Aesthete.148

3. Collector Artist

3.1. Leighton as a Virtuoso

When reading Leighton’s collections as his ‘extended self,’ thus demonstrating his ‘judgements and taste,’149 interesting discoveries can be made. In 1893 an American critic suggested that Leighton’s house was an ‘apartment of a virtuoso,’ falling neither in the category of ‘a luxurious villa like that of Alma Tadema,’ nor of ‘a picture-gallery like that of’ Watts.150 Leighton’s scholarly approach towards art was signified not only by his vast library, but also by a considerable collection of drawings and studies. As George C. Williamson noted, ‘an unfinished picture had an especial charm for Leighton, and many of his most notable works by other men were in this condition.’151 They hung in the Library, staircase and the Silk Room. According to Martina Droth’s interpretation:

‘The prominent presentation of works of art that were incomplete, as if arrested mid- making, served to draw attention to painterly process, effectively thematizing the idea of the studio throughout the house, and bringing into play its alluring association with the private creative act, without yet having introduced Leighton’s own art- making. The route to the studio might then be understood as operating on multiple and mutually reinforcing levels. While, as one would expect, it signalled Leighton’s

146 Anderson, ‘Lost Treasures, Lost Histories, Lost Memories,’ 84.

147 Corkran, Frederic Leighton, 231. Hope was among the few works not included in the 1896 sale: Bryant, ‘An Artist Collects,’ 26.

148 Droth, ‘Leighton’s House,’ 342.

149 Belk, ‘Collectors and Collecting,’ 321.

150 Wallace Wood, ‘Chats with Famous Painters,’ The Century Magazine, vol. 47 (1893): 192.

151 Williamson, Frederic Lord Leighton, 44.

artistic interests and influences, as well as his status, generosity, patronage and worldliness, it also constituted something much more specifically attuned to Leighton’s practice.’152

This demonstration of artistic labour functioned as a clear message of the nature of Leighton’s profession without the need to directly portray himself at work, which he seldom did. Using this indirect connection to his own works perhaps resulted from the emphasis he placed on the conceptual side of being an artist rather than the physical effort involved in embodying one’s ideas – an attitude apt for President of the Academy. The ‘licked surface’ of his Academic paintings concealed all signs of brushwork,153 and perhaps that is why Leighton valued his own studies so highly, considering his sketchbooks to be ‘among his most precious possessions.’154 In an undated note to Watts he expressed hope that the drawing his friend ‘walked off’ with would be someday returned, as an idea worthy of further exploration.155

Indeed, contrary to the common assumption that, unlike Alma-Tadema, he hardly ever made artistic use of his surroundings, Leighton did notice the potential of his collections. In the painted around 1860 Pavonia (fig. 36) and Odalisque (fig. 28) he depicted a peacock feather fan that most likely belonged to him and was borrowed by Prinsep a decade later (fig. 37), when the peacock trend was at its height. Interestingly, after the completion of Odalisque Watts began painting a nude with peacock feathers (fig. 38), providing a continuum of highly aestheticized and eroticised female depictions featuring this Aesthetic attribute, as well as ‘suggesting perhaps a conscious reference amongst a close-knit group of artists.’156

152 Droth, ‘Leighton’s House,’ 346.

153 See the discussion in: Charles Rosen and Henri Zerner, ‘The Ideology of the Licked Surface: Official Art,’ in Romanticism and Realism: The Mythology of Nineteenth Century Art, 221-222 (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1984).

154 Museum label for the exhibition Brothers in Art: Drawings by Watts and Leighton, Compton, Watts Gallery, 17 November 2015 – 19 February 2016.

155 Leighton House Museum, LH/1/1/6/095.

156 Barbara Bryant, ‘A Study With the Peacock’s Feathers,’ in The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones and Watts, 105.

Similarly, Leighton did not remain unaffected by his French connections – the Barbizon school influenced his habit of painting landscapes plein-air157 and his Parisian purchases certainly were not meant to serve as mere decoration. In 1864 he bought four of Delacroix’s mural studies,158 which coincided with his own commissions for monumental works throughout the 1860s. Even before that, he had been taken by Watts’ 1858 projects for Bowood House frescoes and acquired one of the preparatory drawings.159 His interest in the technique prevailed, as he displayed Sargent’s 1893 study for Astarte in the Silk Room. Leighton’s collection, therefore, both demonstrated his place within art history and provided him with potentially useful sources.160 His and Alma-Tadema’s homes were examples of the ‘mutual inspiration’ between artists and patrons, as they displayed the painters’ acquisitions alongside their own works.161 The Silk Room’s south wall was seen directly from Leighton’s North-oriented studio, making it easier for the guests to draw comparisons between the works of the President and his contemporaries, as well as for him to be artistically stimulated. It is certainly thought-provoking that virtually all of the paintings hanging there were either depictions of women or landscapes – themes greatly engrossing him in the 1890s and culminating in his last picture of Clytie (1896, London, Leighton House Museum), subject treated also in a bronze bust of 1881 by Watts.

3.2. Artistic Exchanges

A landscape ‘in the spirit of Corot,’ Haystacks (fig. 39), was presented by Watts to Leighton,162 who had openly admired it and most likely processed in his first version of Clytie

157 Leighton even used the latest French terminology, describing his 1859 landscape sketches as ‘accurate in the impression of the effect’: Prettejohn, ‘Painting Indoors: Leighton and His Studio,’ Apollo 143, no. 408 (1996): 17.

158 Ormond, Lord Leighton, 34.

159 Bryant, ‘An Artist Collects,’ 23.

160 Droth, ‘Leighton’s House,’ 346.

161 Gere with Hoskins, The House Beautiful, 56.

162 Bryant, ‘An Artist Collects,’ 27, 29.

(fig. 40), in which the view from a low perspective similarly opens up onto a hill, behind which upwards furl cirrus clouds. Leighton’s attentive approach to nature was instigated also by John Ruskin’s texts, and thus was close to the Pre-Raphaelites’ credo. His first contact with the Brotherhood took place in 1858 and in the following year he exhibited pencil studies from Capri at their Hogarth Club.163 Leighton’s presence, as his fame burst after the Queen had bought his Cimabue’s Celebrated Madonna in 1855, provided the exhibition with countless honourable visitors, however the artist soon withdrew from showing at the Club due to its antagonism to the Academy.164 The minutely drawn Lemon Tree (1858) is considered the only thing Leighton had in common with the Pre-Raphaelites. His neo- classical, highly idealised depictions were the exact opposite of their realistically painted scenes, often illustrating medieval tales. Even the work of Burne-Jones, who was never a member of the original Brotherhood, stood far away from Leighton’s ‘strong sense of daylight and air,’ as it was characterised by ‘the timeless Celtic twilight.’165 Burne-Jones’ love for stories and a strong narrative was a clear contrast to ‘art for art’s sake’ practiced by Leighton.166

And yet, ‘Leighton and Burne-Jones have repeatedly been presented as the exponents of a Victorian Hellenism, and to both of them Michelangelo was an important mediator between Greek art and the modern world.’167 Despite his belief in tale-telling, Burne-Jones also produced allegorical depictions, in which female protagonists embody abstract notions: Luna, for instance, belongs to an entire series painted in the 1870s. Burne-Jones and Leighton frequently explored the motif of sleep, in its symbolic dimension often enhanced by the presence of a fountain or well. Burne-Jones, whose Chaucer’s Dream might have been modelled on Leighton’s illustration for Romola – despite the claims that he ‘never could care for his work’ – was known for using other artists’ compositions in an analogical way. The

163 Mrs Andrew Lang, Sir Frederick Leighton, BART. (London: Art Journal Office, 1886), 6.

164 Ormond, Lord Leighton, 52.

165 Spalding, Magnificent Dreams, 60.

166 MacCarthy, The Last Pre-Raphaelite, 193.

167 Lene Østermark-Johansen, ‘The Apotheosis of the Male Nude: Leighton and Michelangelo,’ in Frederic Leighton: Antiquity, Renaissance, Modernity, 124.

Dream of Lancelot, on which he worked in early 1896, was a return to Rossetti’s 1858 Oxford Union mural.168 Similarly, Leighton might have acquired Burne-Jones’ studies for their potential artistic use – all of them depicting female figures. The unidentified drawing of a dancing group, for instance, might have been consulted by Leighton for the large-scale paintings of dancers he executed in 1869 for the Wyndhams’ Belgrave House in London.169

The increasing interest Leighton demonstrated in the theme of slumber during the 1880s and 1890s was perhaps not coincidental. The juxtaposition of a sleeping figure and a well might have been inspired by Burne-Jones and took on a more gruesome meaning of Sleep (Hypnos) as a mythological twin brother of Death (Thanatos).170 Well as a source of death appeared already in Leighton’s illustration for Romola,171 and was epitomised by the pool- like fountain in Summer Slumber (1894, private collection). Similar ambiguity of the sleeping figure characterises Flaming June (fig. 41), whose pose was likely influenced by Burne-Jones’ The Briar Rose series (fig. 42), as well as Watts’ Hope, for which, as it is believed, sat Dorothy Dene – the model for Flaming June.172 Moreover, the swirling composition and the motif of death as eternal sleep is a likely reference to Watts’ Endymion, a print after which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1891 (fig. 43).173 Meanwhile, the radiant orange tone of the sanguine chalk study for Hope (1885, Watts Gallery, Compton) is remarkably close to the draperies in Leighton’s painting, where they contribute to the effect of a second sun. The oil study presented to Leighton exemplifies the impact his collection had on his own works and

168 Burne-Jones Talking, 73, 119.

169 Dakers, Clouds, 38.

170 See: Ormond, Lord Leighton, 130; Kenneth Bendiner, An Introduction to Victorian Painting (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), 126-130.

171 Mark W. Turner, ‘Drawing Domestic Decline: Leighton’s Version of Romola,’ in Frederic Leighton: Antiquity, Renaissance, Modernity, 187.

172 Nicholas Tromans, Hope: The Life and Times of a Victorian Icon (Compton: Watts Gallery, 2011), 16. To Hope as a likely source of inspiration point also: Malcolm Warner, ‘Frederic Leighton: Flaming June,’ in Malcolm Warner, Anne Helmreich, Charles Brock, The Victorians: British Painting 1837-1901 (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1996), 194; CSN, ‘Flaming June,’ in Frederic Leighton (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 236.

173 Barbara Bryant, ‘Endymion,’ in Bills and Bryant, G. F. Watts, 278.

40 signifies the Silk Room display as a ‘map’ of how Leighton situated himself among fellow artists.

Watts was also a crucial link between Leighton and Burne-Jones, himself drawing inspiration from the latter, as seen in the comparison of Luna and Hope. All three artists followed Michelangelo in his form and expression, as well as studied the draperies of the Parthenon frieze, casts of which were present in the houses of Leighton, Watts and Alma-Tadema.174 Indeed, Burne-Jones’ style was ‘closer to Leighton’s classicism than to the emotional intensity and gouache designs of the original Pre-Raphaelites.’ Their technique, however, remained entirely different, as Leighton would not allow any degree of ‘the accidental,’ working out his compositions in advance by producing numerous elaborate studies.175 In this light, the unexpected amount of Burne-Jones’ drawings owned by Leighton might point to his interest in the artist’s distinct creative process. Their relations were not as good as those of Leighton and Watts, whom the President visited almost every day and with whom he exchanged current ideas.176 It is therefore probable that Leighton could observe his friend at work, while to examine the methods of Burne-Jones he needed some preparatory studies.

The importance of such works was clear in their circle: Watts is recorded to have ‘above all […] admired Leighton’s drawings and sketches.’177 Yet it was him who exerted a strong influence on Leighton. Both the subject and the format of the latter’s panel for Alma- Tadema resemble Watts’ nudes of that time. Initially sceptic of the panel’s size and shape,178 Leighton must have realised its potential after seeing the tall and narrow canvases of Thetis (fig. 44) and Arcadia (fig. 45), which themselves drew from Ingres’ La Source (c. 1856, Paris, Musee d’Orsay). Thetis was painted after Watts had been praised by Leyland for its smaller prototype, which recalls a similar story behind Leighton’s larger version of The Bath of

174 MacCarthy, The Last Pre-Raphaelite, 93-94; Mary Haweis, Houses Beautiful: Being a Description of Certain Well-Known Artistic Houses (New York: Scribner & Welford, 1882), 27.

175 Spalding, Magnificent Dreams, 31, 36; Bryant, ‘An Artist Collects,’ 27-28.

176 Lamb, Lions in their Dens, 91.

177 Barrington, G. F. Watts, 198.

178 De Cordova, ‘The Panels in Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s Hall,’ 617.

Psyche (fig. 46).179 It is even suggested that Leighton in fact owned one of those small pictures of Thetis.180 Whether this can be confirmed or not, it is certain that Watts’ nudes of that period were represented in Leighton’s house by A Venus, providing a direct connection between their works, again signalling the overlooked role of Leighton’s collection in the creation of his own art.

Conclusion

Leighton’s opulent studio-house of has been much publicised since the painter’s lifetime. Although the main focus has tended to be on its design and decoration, Leighton is increasingly recognised as a passionate collector, having amassed a great variety of objects. For the paintings presented to him by fellow artists he arranged a special display space by adding the so-called Silk Room to the adjacent to his studio Antechamber in 1894-1895, shortly before his death. Despite this clear indication of the importance Leighton placed on this part of his collection, there exist no in-depth studies of it. A brief investigation points to the collections of Leighton’s own patrons as parallel in terms of amassed artists as well as of the public nature of their interiors, a factor affecting their considerate displays. The colour scheme of Leighton’s last addition might have been influenced by the Grosvenor Gallery, while the symmetrical arrangement of works and the hierarchical presentation of artists seems to have referenced the Royal Academy’s exhibitions. Figurative paintings by three famous Academicians, Millais, Alma-Tadema and Watts, occupied the central place. Significantly, Chaucer’s Dream of Good Women by Burne-Jones, who caused a scandal after resigning from the Academy, was excluded from this room and hung in Leighton’s bedroom, the only truly private space within his ‘Palace of Art.’

179 Barbara Bryant, ‘Thetis,’ in Bills and Bryant, G. F. Watts, 194; Julia Dudkiewicz, ‘Arcadia,’ in ibid., 218.

180 Allen Staley, ‘Thetis c. 1866-9,’ in Victorian High Renaissance (The Minneapolis Institute of Arts: 1978), 70.

Although President of the Royal Academy, Leighton was supportive of young artists and monitored the emerging trends. Often struggling to officially exhibit and purchase such painters,181 he had more liberty to promote them within the realm of his own house. His ‘public profile’ and the fame of his Holland Park interiors, thus a desirable display space, resulted in the numerous gifts from both less-known artists and fellow celebrities. Leighton’s residence was London’s important social centre due to the ‘Show Sundays’ and annual ‘musics,’ to which flocked the most influential members of the London art world. The house indeed worked as a ‘salesroom’ and Leighton is well-documented to have been encouraging collectors to purchase the artists he displayed. In part, therefore, his collection of contemporaries functioned as an advertisement for potential buyers. This paired not only with his own generosity towards his younger friends, an image of a public figure modelled on such French painters as Ary Scheffer, but it was also a tool he used to promote what he considered as the right direction of the new generations of artists. Although he remained faithful to his academic technique, he was open enough to appreciate some innovative artists already in the 1850s, as his Parisian acquisitions indicate.

The publicity Leighton’s interiors received was of equal benefit to already established artists. Alma-Tadema’s In My Studio provided a glimpse into his own magnificent studio-house, the only proper rival to 2 Holland Park. Both painters specialised in bringing antiquity to life, yet only Alma-Tadema was directly inspired by his rooms, as demonstrated his In My Studio, hanging on the Silk Room’s south wall. Located on the axis of Leighton’s studio, this display was thus physically linked to Leighton’s own oeuvre. Such arrangement helped Leighton manifest how he situated himself artistically, as well as served as a potential source of reference that is best illustrated by the affinity of Leighton’s Flaming June and Watts’ oil study for Hope. Known for the emphasis he placed on drawings and unfinished works revealing the creative process, Leighton was likely to have been collecting them with the purpose of processing those ideas, compositions and techniques in his own art, as the example of Burne-Jones’ drawings would suggest. It is therefore clear that the Silk Room indeed completed the ‘artistic economy of the house,’ equally meant to express Leighton’s tastes and identity as well as to stimulate his own artistic practice.

181 Greutzner Robins, ‘Leighton,’ 316-317.

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Illustrations

Fig. 1. First floor plan of Leighton’s house in 1896.

Fig. 2. George Aitchison, Design for the Elevation of a Wall of the Picture Gallery, 1895, watercolour.

Fig. 3. The Silk Room, photograph, 1895.

Fig. 4. The Silk Room, 1895, photograph.

Fig. 5. After William Powell Frith, A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881, published 1885, photogravure, 47,5 x 90,8 cm.

Fig. 6. Interior of the Grosvenor Gallery’s West Gallery, published in The Illustrated London News, 5 May 1877.

Fig. 7. Edward Burne-Jones, Chaucer’s Dream of Good Women, 1871, watercolour and bodycolour, 45,7 x 60,9 cm.

Fig. 8. Anna Alma-Tadema, Drawing Room, 1a Holland Park, 1887, watercolour on paper, 27 x 18 cm.

Fig. 9. Photograph of Lawrence Alma-Tadema in the Hall of Panels, published 1897.

Fig. 10. Photograph of Lawrence Alma-Tadema in the Hall of Panels, published 1911.

Fig. 11. Lawrence Alma-Tadema, In My Studio, 1893, oil on canvas, 61.6 x 47 cm.

Fig. 12. Plan of Alma-Tadema’s house’s ground floor.

Fig. 13. Frederic Leighton, A Noble Lady of Venice, c. 1865, oil on canvas, 87,8 x 66,2 cm.

Fig. 14. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Monna Rosa, 1867, oil on canvas, 69 x 53 cm.

Fig. 15. Valentine Cameron Prinsep, My Lady Betty, c. 1864, oil on canvas, 81.3 x 58.1 cm.

Fig. 16. Frederic Leighton, Head of Young Girl, c. 1863.

Fig. 17. Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Anna Alma-Tadema, 1883, oil on canvas, 112 x 76.2 cm.

Fig. 18. Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Spring Flowers, 1911, oil on canvas, 24x18 cm.

Fig. 19. George Frederick Watts, Study for Hope, c. 1885, oil on panel, 66 x 53.3 cm.

Fig. 20. George Frederick Watts, Patient Life of Unrequited Toil, 1890-1891, oil on canvas, 182.9 x 167.6 cm.

Fig. 21. After George Stubbs, The Anatomy of the Horse, c. 1815, etching.

Fig. 22. The drawing-room, 1 Holland Park, 1883-1884.

Fig. 23. Edward Burne-Jones, Luna, 1872-1875, oil on canvas, 101 x 71 cm.

Fig. 24. View of the Watts display at the Manchester Royal Jubilee Exhibition, 1887.

Fig. 25. Edward Burne-Jones, The Annunciation, 1876-1879, oil on canvas, 98 x 44 cm.

Fig. 26. Frederic Leighton, Lieder Ohne Worte, exhibited 1861, oil on canvas, 101.6 x 62.9 cm.

Fig. 27. Edward Burne-Jones, Summer Snow, 1863, wood engraving on paper by the Dalziel Brothers, 14,6 x 10,8 cm.

Fig. 28. Frederic Leighton, Odalisque, 1862, oil on canvas, 90.8 x 45.7 cm.

Fig. 29. Edward Burne-Jones, Chaucer’s Dream of Good Women, 1865, watercolour.

Fig. 30. Frederic Leighton, At the Well (illustration for George Elliot’s Romola), 1863, wood engraving, 10,3 x 15,7 cm.

Fig. 31. Raphael, Christ’s Charge to Peter, 1515- 1516, gouache on paper, 340 x 530 cm.

Fig. 32. The Antechamber at Leighton’s house, engraving, published 1882.

Fig. 33. Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Maurice Sens, 1896, oil on canvas.

Fig. 34. Lawrence Alma-Tadema, published 1895, photogravure, 20 x 16.9 cm.

Fig. 35. Studio recess at Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s 17 Grove End Road house, published in the Architect, May 31, 1889.

Fig. 36. Frederic Leighton, Pavonia, c. 1859, oil on canvas, 53 x 41.5 cm.

Fig. 37. Valentine Cameron Prinsep, Leonora di Mantua, c. 1873, oil on canvas, 167.7 × 124 cm.

Fig. 38. George Frederick Watts, A Study with the Peacock’s Feather, c. 1862-1865, oil on panel, 66 x 56 cm.

Fig. 39. George Frederick Watts, Haystacks (Study on Brighton Downs), exhibited 1883, oil on canvas, 34.3 x 66 cm.

Fig. 40. Frederic Leighton, Clytie I, 1892.

Fig. 41. Frederic Leighton, Flaming June, 1895, oil on canvas, 120 x 120 cm.

Fig. 42. Edward Burne-Jones, The Briar Rose Series: Garden Court, 1870-1890, oil on canvas, 125 x 231 cm.

Fig. 43. George Frederick Watts, Endymion, 1892, engraving.

Fig. 44. George Frederick Watts, Thetis, c. 1870-1886, oil on canvas, 193 x 53.3 cm.

Fig. 45. George Frederick Watts, Arcadia, 1878-1880, oil on canvas, 193 x 61 cm.

Fig. 46. Frederic Leighton, The Bath of Psyche, exhibited 1890, oil on canvas, 189.2 x 62.2 cm.

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