Displaying items by tag: frederic lord leighton

Sotheby’s has set a new auction record for a work on paper by Frederic, Lord Leighton during its July 15 Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite & British Impressionist Art sale in London, selling a study for the artist’s “Flaming June” to an American collector for £167,000 against an estimate of £40,000-60,000.

The pencil and white chalk study is the only head study for the artist’s famous “Flaming June” masterpiece. It was rediscovered hanging discreetly on a bedroom wall at West Horsley Place, a 400-acre Surrey estate, by Sotheby’s Victorian Art specialist Simon Toll.

"The Four Times of Day" (circa 1850) by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot  has been purchased for the nation with the help of a grant from the Art Fund. The four panels have a long association with the UK. Representing Morning, Noon, Evening and Night, they were acquired by artist Frederic Lord Leighton in 1865 and were among the earliest Corot works to be acquired by a British collector. Lord Leighton displayed them as the focal point of his London home, where they provided inspiration for his fellow Victorian artists. After his death, the paintings spent more than a century in the same family collection and have been on loan to the National Gallery since 1997. The pictures were acquired for Lord Wantage at Christie’s in 1896 and their sale to the nation was negotiated by Christie’s.

Corot painted the four large panels, which trace the deepening light of the sky from sunrise to star-studded night, to decorate the Fontainebleau studio of his friend and fellow painter Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps.