Frederic Lord Leighton

At fourteen, Frederic Leighton told his father he meant to be an artist. The sculptor Hiram Powers settled the question: “Sir, you have no choice in the matter—he is one already.”

Ernest Rhys traces the making of an English painter through the studios and art schools of Italy, Frankfort, Brussels and Paris. In 1855, Leighton’s first great London appearance—a picture of Cimabue’s Madonna carried through Florence—startled the Royal Academy with its force and its devotion to early Italian art. But the young painter still had much to learn: Florence’s fashionable mannerisms threatened to shape his hand, while the exacting Frankfort master Steinle would challenge him to find a truer style. Could Leighton keep faith with the Italian ideal of beauty without becoming captive to its imitations?

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