Frederic, Lord Leighton P.R.A., R.W.S. (British, 1830-1896) ...

Hammer

£2,000

Frederic, Lord Leighton P.R.A., R.W.S. (British, 1830-1896) A gothic city (illustration for John Milton's 'Paradise Lost') Watercolour 15 x 17cm overall Signed 'Fred Leighton' in red lower left


Provenance: with Moss Galleries, London; Bonham's 8 Nov 2005 (lot 98); private collection, Kent This watercolour is an illustration of lines 604-609 from Book IV of John Milton's seventeenth-century poem 'Paradise Lost', describing a scene at dusk. There is no reason to assume that the calligraphed inscription on the lower margin is not by Leighton's own hand, who appears to have somewhat altered the verses, changing 'sapphires' to 'fire', and 'clouded' to 'cloudy'. The historicising urbanscape was probably modelled on the German city of Frankfurt-am-Main where Leighton attended the Städelsches Kunstinstitut from 1846 until 1847, before moving to Brussels, a short return to Frankfurt in 1850, and a subsequent residency Rome. With the stay in the Eternal City from 1852, Leighton's aesthetic shifted toward Renaissance art and architecture, and therefore it is most plausible that the above work was executed in the late 1840s. The compositional enclosure of the depiction within a floral border is reminiscent of Leighton's illustration sketch for William Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (private collection, London), also believed to have been produced around 1850. Pencil underdrawing of lines for the text are still visible, and there is trace of gold dust on the yellow floral elements in the lower left corner.