Displaying items by tag: victorian art

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.

Leighton House, once the London home of Lord Leighton, is mounting its most ambitious exhibition since it opened as a museum in 1900. The permanent collection will go into storage to provide space to display 50 Victorian paintings belonging to the Mexican businessman Juan Antonio Pérez Simón.

Pérez Simón, who has long been in business partnership with the telecommunications tycoon and fellow art collector Carlos Slim, has been buying Victorian art since the 1980s, almost entirely at Christie’s and Sotheby’s.