Return of Flaming June: Nine Things You Need To Know
Leighton House Museum has announced the return of Frederic Leighton's Flaming June to Leighton House. Here's nine things you need to know about the artist and the show.
1) The display at Leighton House marks the first time the iconic Flaming June by Frederic Leighton has been returned the house in which it was painted, after residing at the Ponce Museum of Art in Puerto Rico since the Royal Academy exhibition in 1895. This latest exhibition reunites the piece with other paintings shown by Leighton during 1895.
2) Frederic Leighton was a distinguished artist of his time and through his position as President of the Royal Academy (1878-1896) he achieved critical acclaim, securing his place as an influential figurehead for art in late Victorian society.
3) Flaming June is Leighton’s most celebrated piece, considered to be his great masterpiece. The figure painted in oils, epitomises the artist’s classicist nature, with the ‘toxic oleander’ in the right hand corner of the piece symbolising the fragile link between sleep and death.
4) The masterpiece will be shown alongside other works Leighton submitted to the Academy that year, all of which were captured and photographed on easels in Leighton’s studio prior to being sent to the Academy in 1895. The selection of works, including The Maid with Golden Hair, gives an insight into the themes and subjects that informed Leighton’s pieces over the preceding decades.
5) Flaming June: A Masterpiece Comes Home will be followed by the largest exhibition of Leighton’s contemporary Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s work to be shown in London since 1913, titled Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity.
6) Lawrence Alma-Tadema was a Dutch painter who trained in Belgium at the Royal Academy of Antwerp before settling in England in 1870. The work displayed at Leighton House depicts Alma-Tadema’s fascination with the representation of domestic life in Antiquity.
7) The exhibition site, Leighton House Museum, is located on the edge of Holland Park in Kensington and is often cited as one of the most remarkable buildings of the 19th Century. The house was the former home of Frederic Leighton, originally constructed on a modest basis it grew to become a ‘private palace of art.’
8) The house has many defining features but the centrepiece is The Arab Hall, designed to display Leighton’s priceless collection of thousands of Islamic tiles. The opulence continues throughout the house with richly decorated interiors adorned with elaborate mosaic floors.
9) Daniel Robbins, Senior Curator at Leighton House Museum states: “I am delighted that over 125 years on we can reunite these five paintings created by Leighton in the home and studio he cherished. This exhibition will be a chance for visitors to look more closely into this final body of work with Flaming June as its centrepiece and consider afresh Leighton’s achievements as an artist.”
Flaming June: A Masterpiece Comes Home
4 November 2016 – 2 April 2017
Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity
7 July 2017 – 29 October 2017
