Eminent Victorians

At Leighton House in Holland Park, one of the most delightful of London’s museums, is currently an exhibition of drawings by the master of the house himself, Lord Leighton (1830–96). It’s the culmination of a major programme of cataloguing and conservation, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, and is on the first leg of a national tour lasting until spring 2008. The show consists of 55 drawings with a handful of paintings and is accompanied by an excellent catalogue (£15 in paperback). Leighton was unusual in placing a high value on his drawings and keeping virtually every one he made (amounting to 1,650 by the time of his death), though they were subsequently sold off mostly for small sums, from five shillings to 15 guineas. Almost two thirds of them were returned to Leighton House when the museum was set up, though at some point about 400 drawings went missing, in the days when he wasn’t quite as highly regarded as he is now. Some of the best of what’s left are now arranged in two upstairs galleries, and give a fair account of Leighton the draughtsman.

The exhibition begins with the languorous ‘Head of Dorothy Dene’ from 1881, set by itself on an easel in the middle of a room of early drawings, otherwise arranged chronologically. These fine graphite studies (see particularly the male head from Leighton’s famous early painting ‘Cimabue’s Celebrated Madonna’) reach their apogee in a remarkable drawing of a lemon tree, which achieved something like cult status. (Ruskin fell in love with it and borrowed it for an unconscionably long time.) It was drawn with others on the island of Capri, whither Leighton had withdrawn to recoup his energies, and is exceptional for its exquisite textures of bark and shapes of leaf. In the second room we witness a change of heart as Leighton re-establishes his reputation in an increasingly sculptural style, working first in black and white chalk on blue paper, later varying the sheets to include warm brown paper, and then a darker grey-brown support.