See Edmund Blair Leighton Paintings.
Edmund Blair Leighton
Leighton was the son of the artist Charles Blair Leighton. He was educated at University College School, before becoming a student at the Royal Academy Schools. He married Katherine Nash in 1885 and they went on to have a son and daughter. He exhibited annually at the Royal Academy from 1878 to 1920.
Leighton was a fastidious craftsman, producing highly-finished, decorative pictures. It would appear that he left no diaries, and though he exhibited at the Royal Academy for over forty years, he was never an Academician or an Associate.
Leighton was a historical genre painter focusing mainly on Regency and medieval subjects.
The death of Mr Edward Blair Leighton, on September 1st, removed from our midst a painter who, though he did not attain to the higher flights of art, yet played a distinguished part in aiding the public mind to an appreciation of the romance attaching to antiquity, and to a realisation of the fellowship of mankind throughout the ages.
Mr Blair Leighton was born in London, on September 1st 1853, his father being that Charles Blair Leighton, portrait and subject painter, whose exhibits at the Royal Academy and other London galleries covered the period between 1843 and 1855. The son was educated at University College School, before taking a position in an office in the city, but entered the Royal Academy Schools after a course of evening study at South Kensington and Heatherley’s.
He commenced exhibiting in 1874, and succeeded, four years later, in securing the verdict of the Hanging Committee of the Royal Academy in favour of two works, entitled respectively ‘Witness My Act and Seal,’ and ‘A Flaw in the Title.’ Since then his highly wrought style was regularly represented at Burlington House until two years prior to his decease. Among the better known of his pictures, many of which were published, may be named ‘The Dying Copernicus (1880), To Arms (1888), Lay thy sweet hand in mine and trust in me ( 1891), Lady Godiva (1892), Two Strings (1893), Launched in Life (1894), The Accolade (1901), Tristram and Isolde (1907), The Dedication (1908), The Shadow (1909), ‘To the Unknown Land (1911),’ and ‘The Boyhood of Alfred The Great,’ 1913. For the past dozen years or so, Mr E Blair Leighton had been a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters. He had married in 1885, Miss Katherine Nash, by whom he had, with a daughter, one son, Mr E J Blair Leighton, who has also adopted painting as a profession.
List of works by Leighton
Edmund Blair Leighton Paintings Stitching the Standard
Edmund Blair Leighton Paintings The End of The Song
Edmund Blair Leighton Paintings A Favour
Edmund Blair Leighton Paintings Courtship
Edmund Blair Leighton Paintings The Charity of St
Leighton Paintings Lilac
Leighton Paintings Forest Tryst
Leighton The Accolade Painting
Leighton God Speed Painting
Leighton The King and the Beggar-maid Painting
Leighton Alain Chartier Painting
Leighton Call to Arms Painting
Leighton Duty Painting
Leighton Lady in a Garden Painting
Appeal of The Work of Edmund Blair Leighton.
This short comment regarding the work of Leighton was written in 1897, by Gleeson White, a writer and journalist on art.
"The artist selects as a rule themes which offer an excuse for old-world costume, and an easily read anecdote. To place Mr E Blair Leighton's work in a class to which it makes no pretence to belong, or to contrast it with the masterpieces of the past, or even of the present, would be to do it an injustice. It is the pictorial equivalent of light literature, of belles letters, of graceful novels and vers de societe, of much that is charming of its kind, if by its very nature ephemeral."
This is a very perceptive comment about the work of Edmund Blair Leighton, which has always struck me as being like elegantly crafted light music. I think that the writer, who called Leighton's work ephemeral, would be rather surprised by its enduring appeal.
other artist: childe hassam Paintings Vittore Carpaccio Paintings Frida Kahlo Paintings Sir Henry Raeburn Paintings