Frederic, Lord Leighton, 'Archway on the Palatine', after 1859

Frederic, Lord Leighton, was perhaps the pre-eminent painter in Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century. His style was academic. His religious, mythological and historical subjects were extremely popular, and made him very wealthy. As a young man he was closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, but he was never a member of the Brotherhood. He travelled throughout Europe and also spent time in North Africa. He knew a wide range of artists, including Ingres, Delacroix, Corot, Monet and Whistler. From 1878 he was President of the Royal Academy. He was the only British artist ever elevated to the peerage. He died the day after it was conferred, making it the shortest-lived peerage in history.

Leighton’s works are highly polished, focusing on colour and form. There are few hints of realism. He was also attracted to making oil sketches in the open air. Almost none of these works entered the market during his lifetime. He rarely used his oil sketches as references for his finished oils. Leighton clearly found sketching outside relaxing. He wrote to his friend and fellow artist George Frederick Watts, describing oil sketching as ‘the most irresponsible, restful thing I can do and fills time delightfully’. Leighton was a very private man and there is little information about his personal life. The reasons for his production of works in such a different style from his finished oils are therefore not known. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he appears to have been sufficiently proud of his sketches to let people see them. A photograph of Leighton’s studio shows this and other sketches framed on the wall. After his death, Archway on the Palatine was sold at auction in 1896.

Leighton visited Italy on many occasions. He stayed in Rome from the summer of 1852 to the winter of 1855. It has been suggested that his earliest surviving oil sketches date from 1859. This would mean that this work was produced during a later visit, perhaps in the 1860s. The ruins on the Palatine Hill were a popular subject for artists. They combined romantic ruins with lush foliage and were easily accessible. Here, Leighton contrasted cool, shaded areas of the archway with the brighter and hotter area directly outside. The comparison between an aged architectural relic and the fresher natural world was favoured by many artists when painting Italian views. The approach owes something to the works of seventeenth-century artists such as Claude, Poussin or Dughet. Leighton must have waited for the sun to be in the ideal position to cast shadows across the archway. He would then have worked rapidly before the light changed and the view altered.