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#art made by lord frederic leighton
thelonesomequeen · 8 months
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Just wanted to point out that Alba made a post called Flaming June. It’s also the name of an exhibit at the MET right now. So when Justin was in NYC recently she was most likely there with him
Interesting catch! 🦎
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steliosagapitos · 3 years
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     Charles Edward Perugini (British painter) 1839 - 1918 The Ramparts, Walmer Castle; Portraits of the Countess Granville, and the Ladies Victoria and Mary Leveson-Gower, 1891
Oil on canvas; 124 x 184 cm. (48.75 x 72.5 in.). Catalogue Note Christie's Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1891, this attractive triple portrait shows the second wife and two daughters of one of the great Whig magnates of the Victorian age. Granville George Leveson-Gower, second Earl Granville (1815-1891), entered Parliament in 1837, moving to the Lords, where he headed the Liberal party for many years, on his father's death in 1846. During a long political career serving four prime ministers - Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Lord Aberdeen and Gladstone, he held numerous high offices of state and was associated with some of the most important events and significant issues of the day. As colonial and foreign secretary, posts he held for long periods between 1868 and 1886, he was beset by imperialist crises in India and South Africa, Canada and New Zealand. He also had to cope with the Franco-Prussian War and the ambitions of Bismarck, the aftermath of the great Eastern Question of the 1870s, and the occupation of Egypt that ended so tragically with the death of Gordon at Khartoum in January 1885. His urbane, cosmopolitan outlook was an undoubted asset to his party, while his London house in Carlton House Terrace gave it a social centre in much the same way that Holland House, Kensington, had done earlier in the century. Lord Granville's first wife died without issue in 1860. On 26 September 1865, he married Castalia Rosalind (1847-1938), youngest daughter of Walter Frederick Campbell of Islay, Scotland, and a full thirty-two years younger than her husband. It is she who appears on the left in the picture, now forty-four and looking remarkably youthful for her age. Their marriage was to be blessed with five children: Victoria and Sophia, who always seems to have been known as Mary, are the two girls depicted here. Victoria is seated beside her mother, holding a fan behind her head and an open book, from which she has perhaps been reading aloud, on her lap. Her younger sister approaches with a spray of dog-roses. Victoria was now twenty-four and would remain a spinster for some time, marrying Harold John Hastings Russell, a barrister, in 1896. Sophia married Hugh Morrison of Fonthill House, Tisbury, in Wiltshire. For many years he was prominent in local affairs, serving as High Sheriff of the county, a J.P., and Tory member of Parliament for the Salisbury division from 1918. Both sisters produced children, and both outlived their spouses. The ladies are seen on the Kent coast, looking out over the English Channel. Lord John Russell had made Earl Granville Lord Warden of the Ports in 1865, thus enabling his family to use Walmer Castle as a country retreat. Servants have brought out a wicker sofa, furnished with cushions, together with a side-table, books and newspapers, a footstool for Lady Granville and even a carpet, but to the left looms a large cannon as a reminder of the Castle's original purpose. The juxtaposition of this potent symbol of aggression, cast in uncompromising bronze, and the display of femininity represented by the three aristocratic women, fashionably dressed and indulged with every luxury, does much to give the picture its piquancy and edge. The artist Charles Edward Perugini was aged 52 at the time of the picture's exhibition in 1891 and was at the height of his career, this the picture being one of his most ambitious. He had lavished his utmost skill on depicting the dresses, particularly Lady Granville's grey silk gown, and had devised an enchanting colour scheme in which pearly, iridescent tones are set off by bold touches of lacquer-like red, distributed across the canvas from the table in the left foreground to the geraniums in the right middle-distance. In the past Perugini's speciality had been idealised genre subjects, but these were beginning to go out of fashion and it is hard to resist a suspicion that with The Ramparts, Walmer Castle he was making a bid for greater recognition as a painter of society portraits. Perugini had been born in Naples, the son of a singing-master, but had grown up in England since the age of eight. By 1853 he was in Rome, where he met the young Frederic Leighton, the future president of the Royal Academy and undisputed head of the late Victorian art establishment. Perugini became one of Leighton's many protégés, continuing to receive his financial support well into the late 1870s possibly as payment for studio assistance. Certainly Perugini's style as an artist was greatly influenced by Leighton's, and he explored a similar range of subject-matter, operating, as it were, on the borders between modern life and an idealism in the classical-cum-Aesthetic taste. His Girl Reading, shown at the R.A. in 1878, is a perfect example. Like Leighton, moreover, he was loyal first and foremost to the Academy, where he showed almost every year from 1863 to 1915. In 1874 Perugini married Kate Collins, the younger daughter of Charles Dickens and widow of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Charles Allston Collins. (She was hence the sister-in-law of another novelist, Wilkie Collins). She herself was a talented artist, although she is probably best known to posterity as the model for the distraught young woman in Millais' popular painting The Black Brunswicker of 1860. Perugini too was intimate with the great ex-Pre-Raphaelite. Perugini's portrait of the Granvilles vividly reflects these artistic allegiances. Its high degree of finish and polished surfaces are eminently Leightonesque, while the subject evokes comparison with Millais' Hearts are Trumps, his portrait of the three Armstrong sisters shown at the Royal Academy in 1872, which in turn owes a debt to Reynolds's Ladies Waldegrave. Similarly, if a little more subtly, Perugini's portrait seems to echo Three Ladies adorning a Term of Hymen, Sir Joshua's portrait of the three Montgomery sisters that had been in the National Gallery in London since 1837. The mingling of standing and seated figures in Perugini's design, their conversational interaction, and the part played by flowers (the bouquet in the Countess's lap, the garlands held by Sophia) in linking them together, all suggest that the artist had found inspiration in this monumental work. Only a few portraits Royal Academy were noticed by the critics. F.G. Stephens, the veteran critic on the Athenaeum thought the picture 'pretty and excessively polished, somewhat flat and hard, yet bright, studious, and pure. The ladies are marvellously attired, and beautiful according to the standard of the Book of Beauty'. Stephens felt it was 'Mr Perugini's best work', exhibited to date. The masterpiece to which the artist had so clearly aspired had been achieved.
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k00271513 · 2 years
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Inspiration/research
Frederic, Lord Leighton
The statue of Laocoön and His Sons, also called the Laocoön Group has been one of the most famous ancient sculptures ever since it was excavated in Rome in 1506 and placed on public display in the Vatican,where it remains. It is very likely the same statue that was praised in the highest terms by the main Roman writer on art, Pliny the Elder.The figures are near life-size and the group is a little over 2 m in height, showing the Trojan priest Laocoön and his sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus being attacked by sea serpents. This is the earlier of Frederic Leighton’s only two life-size sculptures, both made with the assistance of Thomas Brock. In subject and scale it was intended as a challenge to one of the greatest classical sculptures, The Laocoön, which shows three men being crushed by sea serpents. Frederic Leighton was a pioneer of what became known as the ‘New Sculpture’ movement in Britain. This fresh approach looked back to classical sculpture while focusing on the naturalism of the body through careful modelling of the surface. This coincided with a revival of interest in bronze, the lost wax technique used here allowing for precision in the treatment of form.
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muslimaltag · 4 years
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John William Godward, R.B.A.
1861-1922
BRITISH
THE FRAGRANT ROSE
signed J.W. GODWARD. and dated 92. (lower left)
oil on canvas
50 by 35 1/2 in.
127 by 90.2 cm
PROVENANCE:
Thomas McLean, London (1892)
C.G. Sloane, Washington, D.C. (by circa 1976)
LeRoy Carson (and sold, Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, October 7, 1977, lot 282, illustrated)
Williams & Son, London (acquired at the above sale)
Mitsukoshi, Japan (acquired from the above, December 1978)
Acquired from the above
EXHIBITED:
London, Thomas McLean, 1892, no. 30
LITERATURE:
Vern G. Swanson, John William Godward: The Eclipse of Classicism, Suffolk, 1997, p. 186, no. 1892.15, illustrated
CATALOGUE NOTE
The model for The Fragrant Rose is Lily Pettigrew, one of the famous "sisters Pettigrew" (Harriet, Lillian and Rose), celebrated for their beauty and well-known as artist’s models in London. They posed for John Everett Millais, James McNeil Whistler, John Singer Sargent, and Edward John Poynter, among others, their features synonymous with the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic. The youngest sister, Rose, remembered Lily as the most beautiful of the three girls: “My sister Lily was lovely… She had [the] most beautiful curly red gold hair, violet eyes, a beautiful mouth, classic nose and beautifully shaped face, long neck, well set, and a most exquisite figure; in fact, she was perfection” (as quoted in Swanson, p. 27). John William Godward, it appears, always painted an exact likeness of his models, rather than altering them or creating composite figures, and this allows for comparison with photographs of Lily in the Edward Linley Sambourne collection held at Leighton House (fig. 1). Upon viewing the present work, Lily’s great nephew, Neil Pettigrew, confirms that the likeness is hers. Lily was Godward's favorite model, sitting for him no less than five times in 1892 and at least four times in 1893. In these paintings there is evidence that Godward was romantically involved with Lily (or that he wanted to be) and in his painting, Yes or No? (fig. 2) Lily is seen with a man, believed to be a rare self-portrait of the artist.
In 1892, when the present work was painted, Godward was poised on the brink of his great career. He had exhibited two oils at the Royal Academy the previous year, Sweet Siesta of a Summer Day (see lot 39) and Clymene (1891, location unknown, also featuring Lily as model), earning him critical accolades. As seen in Clymene, Godward excelled at single-figure compositions and unlike his pictures from the 1880s, which presented anecdotal narratives within architectural settings, those from the 1890s held an Aesthetic focus. With their brilliant coloration and solid compositions, these works present a more abstract suggestion of mood and subject and are similar to those of Godward's artistic hero, Frederic, Lord Leighton. Paintings like Leighton's Lachrymae (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Flaming June (Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico) appear to have been the precedent for Godward's solitary women in marble settings. In The Fragrant Rose, Godward has scaled his canvas to be among his largest, with her three-quarter length figure essentially presented in life-size. Behind her is a budding oleander and richly painted Mediterranean landscape overlooking an azure bay, a harmonious paradise where flowers bloom, the sun always shines, and lapping waves are faintly heard from far below.
From the very beginning of his career, Godward was an exacting researcher, sourcing every element of his paintings from public collections or from photographs and objects that he acquired himself, which would reappear in multiple compositional arrangements. Here the model’s golden peplos (also seen in Clymene) is belted with a ribbon that is dyed in expensive Tyrian purple, which was extracted from snails. At her shoulder are circular brooches made of garnet cabochons mounted in gold with filigree decoration, likely Victorian in Etruscan-style. The artist contrasts these vivid details with the expertly rendered three-dimensionality of the cool, white frieze, a detail of a horseman from the Parthenon (fig. 3), part of the Elgin Marbles held in the Duveen Gallery at the British Museum. Recognized as the “master of marble,” Godward lavishes attention on his depiction of the material, and treats these elements as if they are broad planes of gemstones in variegated hues, as seen in the verde antico at lower left.
We would like to thank Neil Pettigrew for his contribution to this catalogue entry.
https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2018/european-art-n09869/lot.7.html
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lilyarthistory · 4 years
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Visit to Lady Lever Art Gallery - 09/10
Today we visited the Lady Lever Gallery in Port Sunlight, a short train journey from Liverpool city centre. The village of Port Sunlight was beautiful and felt the perfect setting for an afternoon of admiring art. The gallery was small, but this was good as it didn’t feel too overwhelming as some institutions can, and housed a fine collection of art. We saw ‘The Scapegoat’ by Holman Hunt, a work which had been discussed in a few lectures. Seeing the work in real life allowed the appreciation for the attention to detail and the beauty of the work. Holman Hunt spent months in Jerusalem painting from life, the efforts of which are so clear to see in this work.
As we continued in the gallery, Julie ensured we studied every aspect of the work during analysis; the colour, light, brushstrokes, perspective, line, scale, etc. She also introduced some of the symbols and iconography of paintings, ones that persistently appeared across many works. We were also made to choose a historical painting to do a presentation on, discussing the iconography. My presentation was on The Garden of Hesperides by Frederic Lord Leighton, of which I gave a formal analysis and iconographical reading. Although extremely daunting, this task was easier than anticipated and felt relaxed in this setting. Although it does not feel adequate preparation for some of our future presentations, it was still useful to get this experience. 
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mafreemantle · 5 years
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What is finished?
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An essay commissioned by SMITH to accompany Dale Lawrence’s solo exhibition, Further Prototypes at the gallery.
When is an artwork finished? At show time? When the artist says so? What if an artist isn’t ‘finishing’ them on purpose, and what if he’s active in the gallery throughout the show? What if he’s asking himself—and us—whether there is such a thing as finished at all?
This is one of many curveballs thrown by Dale Lawrence in Further Prototypes, his third solo show at SMITH, the latest stanza in his wry inquiry into the ambitions of art and its practitioners. With Look Busy (2016) and Another Helping (2017), as with his Art Joburg show Amateur Hour (2018), Lawrence scratched at these ideas, studying the tension between focused intent and wilful abandon. Here, he puts the ideas to theatre.
“Finished is dead,” says Lawrence, who chooses instead to work with the vitality of experimentation. Doing so brings action, change, motion and surprise into another distinctively considered collection of mixed media offerings that this time includes imagery variously scratched into animal fat, drawn onto photocopier glass and printed on bread. There’s also a bath in the gallery and, yes, he will bathe in it. Every day for six weeks.
In Seen and Not Seen, the bathtub work, Lawrence will prove his interactions with it without showing them. We will see solely the evidence of his activity; the memory of it. A wet footprint, perhaps, or a crumpled towel. By repurposing the gallery as a working space, a conduit through which Lawrence passes, he draws attention away from the idea of finished works hanging inert on a wall and towards the lively, uncertain environment from which his works are made. 
Throughout the show, Lawrence will be otherwise active in the space, working on his largest canvas to date, the 1.75m x 3.5m Hercules Wrestling with Death for the Large Bathers in situ. These elements of his normal life—the painting, the bathing—help to set the show in a state of flux, placing artmaking as a functional part of the everyday. Here Lawrence draws from German artist Joseph Beuys, who considered art much broader than painting, sculpting and exhibiting. For Beuys, as for Lawrence, the impulse to create is seen as a basic component of human life.
“Completeness and incompleteness coexist. We are never finished. Our routines become rituals and our rituals can degenerate into routines. Art is a form of distilling reality, where grand intentions and everyday mundanities are the subjects—with sometimes overwhelming and sometimes underwhelming results.”
Hercules is Lawrence’s playful tracing of a mashup of two classic scenes with similar compositions by Frederic Lord Leighton and Paul Cézanne. Leighton’s horrified characters, Cezanne’s indifferent bathers and finally Lawrence’s cursory retelling of these stories probes at how the function of art has changed. Art used to need to capture critical and epic moments, later just moments. What do we ask of it now?
That this and other works are in fact or appear ostensibly unfinished stems from a disregard for finality that permeates this collection and can be traced further back. Amateur Hour fleshed out an argument that achievement is subordinate to the act of the pursuit thereto. Then as now, pursuit is Lawrence’s first virtue. To arrive is to abandon pursuit, to be finished. And finished is dead. 
Lawrence’s use of masterpieces as source material in the show stems from this notion. His respect for striving over finding sees prototypes as new models of thought. The creative sphere is one for experiment and testing, where new ideas and aesthetics are prototyped and test-driven before being adopted in the real world. 
“When a work is considered a masterpiece it implies that an idea has been refined to the point of absolute completion and perhaps exhaustion, leaving it short of much of the vitality of the prototype.”
Lawrence’s most pointed jab at this is the work St. Lawrence Handing out the Treasures of the Church, where he treats a photocopy machine’s glass as a printing plate. Viewers of the work will be able to print out a copy of the famous scene, as artist and device stage a modern parody on the doling out of churchly treasures. The cumbersome photocopier is the artist himself, a dubious intermediary through which an original and pure thought must traverse. Repetitions mean diminishing returns. More is less.
“If art is a means by which to pay homage to inspiration it is also proof of the inability of human beings to accurately express the purity of that inspiration. The observer principle suggests that it is impossible to observe a phenomenon without changing it. Art is an interference.”
Portrait of Ideal Self as St. Paul the Hermit, Except Not so Poor and Hungry and Naked and Lonely and Cold is a relief print on a sheet of bread, akin in both substance and design to the communion offering but depicting a figure engaged in a leisure activity. Bread is a basic unit of substance and signifier of spiritual nourishment, yet only represents meaning. It has none in and of itself.
St. Lawrence? Communion bread? Has Lawrence gone all religious on us? The gallery is, after all, art’s church. This is where a form of aesthetic communion is practiced. This is where we gather to drink wine and hear nominated spokespeople muse on the meaning of it all. The substance of the offering depends in some part to the faith we place in the institution that houses it, and of course the person handing us the sacrament. Communion bread is either metaphysical and full of meaning, or vacuous and in dire need of some Marmite.
Or, as Lawrence suggests, lightly salted like a Lay’s crisp. Perhaps the crowning piece of the show is another remake, this time a riff on the 'Tragedia Civile' by Jannis Kounellis. Lawrence uses Lay’s crisp packets where Kounellis used gold leaf to festoon a wall signifying the accomplishments of the past. Lawrence replaces the original’s hook, hat and overcoat with a bowl of Lay’s lightly salted crisps lying on the table for consumption, while a mobile phone lies charging on the shelf instead of a paraffin lamp. This self-administering of communion, a modern offering of no substance in an age of cheap imitation and distraction, wonders at the depth of our dubious relationship with conveyors of meaning.
But accomplishment implies some measure of success and finality, and we know how Lawrence feels about those things. His title for the installation, Tragedy of the Rainbow Warriors, mashes up the original with a newspaper headline marking a supposedly seminal moment in recent South African history.  Nelson Mandela, dressed in a Springbok jersey, hands captain Francois Pienaar the 1995 Rugby World Cup trophy. Here is a moment that aimed to tell us something had ended. But was this the end—or the beginning—of anything?
Clearly, Lawrence detects a kind of idiocy in viewing this or any moment as a conclusion or resolution. “We were supposed to feel like something had been solved. We were offered absolution from our sins, cheap closure in a flash. The truth was something a lot less certain.”
Lawrence doesn’t miss this opportunity for another witticism. Noting that we lay our crisps onto our tongues like communion wafers, he nominates a Western brand as our priest. As Apartheid ended and sanctions were lifted, we South Africans were rewarded with a deluge of attractive but empty gifts from the West. The Gods were good to us.
If Lawrence is playing with his use of the pedestal it is more as jester than preacher. Like a king’s clown he agitates, entertains and excites, making himself vulnerable, present and unguarded. Lawrence’s work can also be downright funny. A found ceramic vase lies shattered on the floor beneath its pedestal, surrounded by a handful of rubber bands, the dull accoutrements it was used to contain. The ornate is reduced to a vessel for cheap, functional detritus. A vessel, grand and full of potential, tragically reduced to its base utility. But is an ornament less impressive when it is being used?
With Nameless and Friendless, Lawrence removes the legs from one found chair and attaches them to the ends of another, making one absurdly tall and the other comically legless. The height difference implies a hierarchy yet both are made precarious and arguably useless by the modifications. Does more chair make a chair not a chair? How much chair can you remove before a chair is not a chair anymore?
In a series titled Attempts, Lawrence shows a stack of Indian ink on paper drawings, each attempt piled on top of the next. The drawings are gestural and impulsive, full of Lawrence’s trademark concerted playfulness. The sum total of these attempts are presented as works in themselves, their finished-ness abrupt and questionable.
Lawrence’s fat works—for which he avidly carved into slabs of tallow made according to a Joseph Beuys recipe—dig into the idea of fat as both an essential, life-supporting substance and one that signifies superfluity and excess. Self-portrait in Front of the Burning Cathedral references the recent Notre Dame fire and queries the potential of burnt wood as something very much alive and useful. Lawrence’s surface this time is burnt yellowwood, South Africa’s national wood, mirroring the French oak beams used to support the Notre Dame’s spire.
Further Prototypes may speak to Kounellis’s work in one instance most clearly but the kinship runs deeper and permeates the show. Kounellis was famously direct, his work keenly responsive to its time. When invited to inaugurate an upmarket art gallery in the late 1980s, he filled the space by suspending large pieces of ox carcass on iron panels.  “I apologise to everyone: I would like to have made an Arcadian landscape, but the times did not permit that,” Kounellis told the curator. 
For Lawrence, like Kounellis, art is an occupation and a mirror. It is what it sees. What Lawrence sees is uncertainty, possibility, transience. The magnificent in the mundane, the mundane in the magnificent. A loop with no end, an endless question.
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kellerose · 3 years
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Recreation of Flaming June by Frederic Leighton: a Holistic Analysis
Inventory List: 
In Flaming June, there is a woman who is lying on a lounge chair with her long lying on either side. There also seems to be a red cloth of some sort hanging down in the front. The woman’s position has her facing to the right side of the painting. Both of her knees are bent; the right leg is bent up to her chest lying against the back of the chair and her left leg is slightly bent with her thigh stretching across the front of the chair and her foot placed on the ground. The woman is wearing a long and see-through orange dress hanging loosely across the chair. Her left arm reaches across her chest as the hand lies on her right arm, which is bent and tucked under her hair as she rests her head on it. Her hair is brushed over her head, again towards the right, which exposes her ear and is positioned perfectly to show her face. The woman’s facial expression is quite graceful with her eyes closed as if she is sleeping. The setting of the painting looks to be in a room in front of a fireplace with flowers placed behind and on the right side of the woman. In the background, you can see a glimpse of a body of water glistening in the evening sun. A gold frame takes up the last bit of the picture. The flooring of this painting are white tiles that have a slim appearance that is enough to show where her left foot lies. 
Composition:
The angle of the painting is directed towards the woman, making her the central subject of the piece. Although she is taking up the majority of the picture, the background with the water and objects, like a flower bouquet to the right, take up the rest of the piece. As well as the white tiled flooring at the bottom, which completes the entirety of the painting. 
Visual Cues:
Color- there is an intense amount of color used in the piece. A strong gleam of light showers down until the water behind the women’s head, which makes me believe, by the position of the sun, that this was made on a summer’s evening. The woman has long, red auburn hair with a vibrant orange dress. Her skin is pale with accents of pink on her cheeks, lips, and elbows. There is also an abundance of red throughout the picture, with red flowers to the top right and a blanket that lies underneath the woman. The entire painting exudes warm toned colors to represent the idea of summer. 
Form- The whole painting follows the horizontal perspective of an image. How the woman lies as well as all of the objects within the painting follow the horizontal lines.
Depth- It is clear that the main focal point of the image is the woman lying on the lounge chair. She is in the central part of the painting while the lighting in the background right in the back of her acts as some sort of spotlight for her. She is meant to be the focal point while everything else is meant to surround the background. 
Movement- There is movement with the woman’s hair on either side of the chair. There is also movement with the dress as her position caused the wrinkles and bunched up areas. There are small ripples in the water behind her which indicate movement. 
Gestalt Laws:
Continuation- The woman’s body and face are all facing the right side of the image which automatically leads viewers to look towards the right before anything else. 
Semiotic Signs and Codes:
Indexical Sign- The title of the painting, Flaming June, immediately correlates to the idea of hot and warm summers. When that is in mind, the woman is seemingly wearing a light garment with bright colors, indicating that the weather must be warm and the color of the dress resembles the title. The flowers may also indicate the idea of summer and warm weather. Usually on warmer days, people tend to feel drained early in the day, so they tend to take evening naps, which seems to be what the woman is doing here. 
Metonymy- Taking that her eyes are closed and that she’s resting her head, one may assume that the subject of this painting is resting. 
Cognitive Elements:
Memory- If you recall any kind of long needed rest on a warm summer evening, or any kind of nap in a similar position, this painting may mean more to you. 
Expectation- While sleeping is usually known to be within the bedroom on a mattress, someone sleeping on a lounge chair may seem strange, unusual, and quite uncomfortable.
 Selectivity- The woman being the central focus, taking up almost the entire image, and wearing a vibrant outfit, it is not unusual that she would be the first thing someone notices.
Dissonance- The gleam of light on the water behind the woman can be slightly distracting to those viewing the image. 
Words- The title Flaming June wraps the entire painting up perfectly. The colors, especially in the dress, make up the word “Flaming” and “June” indicates the first month of the scorching weather. Because of this title, the woman has become a spitting image of what summer looks like.  
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Personal Perspective: When I first laid my eyes on this picture, I couldn’t get over the beauty of it. The woman sleeping looks so graceful and overall endearing. The long, loose dress adds to the elegance of the picture and the really long hair adds to the amazement I had found when first looking at it. After looking more into the painting, you can see her right foot peeking out from under her left thigh and it’s become my favorite part of the image because of how adorable I find it. 
Historical Perspective: Frederic Leighton worked at the Royal Academy in England in the 19th century. Flaming June was revealed in 1895 and has been categorized as one of his best works. Leighton used oil paint for this particular painting, which was widely popular in France in the 19th century. His friend and protege, Dorothy Deene, was the inspiration behind the woman of the image. The body of water behind her is known as the Mediterranean Sea, which further establishes the location. Although it was an artwork recognized and praised by millions, the piece completely vanished until decades later when it reappeared on an art market. This Victorian art style completely lost taste with people. Now, this painting is cherished as a cultural heritage to Puerto Ricans. 
Technical Perspective: When composing an art piece with oil, it is usually wise to paint the same subject continuously. When painting the same subject, you get to know the materials at hand a lot easier. This is why Frederic Leighton chose Dorothy Deene as the subject for this and many other paintings, because he knew how to use those materials best on her. With oil paints, it’s wise to limit your palette, starting with the basic colors of the painting first before starting to mix to get other colors. He had to use darker versions of colors and lighter versions to create the value and composition of the piece. Those darker and lighter colors indicated the shades and highlight to create that 3D effect of the whole painting. 
Historical Perspective: The dress, the wavy long hair, the furniture and structure of the place she is in all indicate the Victorian era lifestyle. The abundance usage of white marble or cement construction is an iconic symbol of Victorian life. The art style as well is a lot similar to the works composed during that era as well. 
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When recreating any photo or art piece, it’s critical to look at the entire picture. The pose, the setting, the placement of the camera, the objects on or around her were a crucial part of my final result. When I did the recreation of the photo, I felt that the position of the woman was the most critical part. The painting had the majority of the focus on her, so that’s why there’s more of a resemblance to the woman than the rest of the painting. I didn’t have a long orange dress, so I had used my bed sheets to drape across the chair and myself. I made sure that my legs and arms were positioned the same as the woman as well as the hair and facial expression. 
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Editorial, Artsy, and Eli Hill. “5 Oil Painting Tips for Beginners.” Artsy, 2 Aug. 2018, www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-5-oil-painting-tips-beginners.
Museo de Arte de Ponce. “Flaming June by Lord Frederic Leighton - Google Arts & Culture.” Google, Google, artsandculture.google.com/story/flaming-june-by-lord-frederic-leighton/jAKCa7FDV8CtJA. 
Lester, Paul Martin. Visual Communication: Images with Messages . Sixth ed., Michael Rosenberg, 2014.
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pjg101 · 5 years
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The month of June always brings to my mind the expression Flaming June as well as the painting of the same name that is the magnum opus of Frederic, Lord Leighton. The painting is classicist in nature, and the sleeping woman alludes to the nymphs and naiads often sculpted by the Greeks. It is a stunning painting with rich, colours. It’s also strange to think that it went out of fashion, disappeared from the art scene for a while and now resides in Puerto Rico. For those that are interested, Lord Leighton is the shortest live peer of all time (having lived for a single day after being made a hereditary peer). His work is associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, and there is a wonderful gallery, Leighton House Museum*, at his former home in Kensington, which is well worth a visit if you’re in the area.
It’s easy to say that the weather this year can’t be described as Flaming June, and that it couldn’t be any more different to how it was twelve months ago. On my afternoon walk today with Alfie, my dog, I thought of this charming painting, the heady summer of last year, the long, drowsy afternoons walking or resting by the river Cam. I very much doubt that anyone would have been slumbering en plein air today, even mystical nymphs or naiads
Even so, it was lovely to walk along by the Grand Union Canal despite everything being absolutely bedraggled. It was so wet that even the ducks and Canada geese were sheltering from the rain. There were gorgeous orangey-yellow flames of flag-irises at the side of the river,and cheerful but soaked-to-the skin holidaymakers at locks, who were determined to make the most of their narrow boat holidays – no matter how wet and cold they became.
    Ducks sheltering from the rain
Even this chap was too wet to move
Seven goslings
  To Alfie, this kind of drenched-to the-bone walk is absolute heaven. To those that know him, he does like to rescue the occasional ‘fetch it’, aka a stick, from his water-side walks. Today, there were so many extra smells and interesting things to explore, all brought out by the rain. To be honest, the last thing I really wanted to do this afternoon was to put my waterproofs on and walk in the horizontal rain. I’d have much rather stayed indoors, lit the fire and curled up with a book, but I’m glad I did because, today more than any other day, made me appreciate just how much pleasure can be taken from a simple walk along the river; that despite grey skies, if you just look, whether it’s at the brightly coloured canal boats, the goslings that have survived to adolescence, the cheerful chat of a stranger, that there is always is always something interesting and uplifting to be found.
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    * The Leighton House Museum, https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/subsites/museums/leightonhousemuseum1.aspx
Flaming June The month of June always brings to my mind the expression Flaming June as well as the painting of the same name that is the magnum opus of Frederic, Lord Leighton.
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dailybiblelessons · 4 years
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Tuesday: Reflection on the Fifth Sunday in Lent
Hebrew Scripture from the Former Prophets: 2 Kings 4:18-37
When the child was older, he went out one day to his father among the reapers. He complained to his father, “Oh, my head, my head!” The father said to his servant, “Carry him to his mother.” He carried him and brought him to his mother; the child sat on her lap until noon, and he died. She went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, closed the door on him, and left. Then she called to her husband, and said, “Send me one of the servants and one of the donkeys, so that I may quickly go to the man of God and come back again.” He said, “Why go to him today? It is neither new moon nor sabbath.” She said, “It will be all right.” Then she saddled the donkey and said to her servant, “Urge the animal on; do not hold back for me unless I tell you.” So she set out, and came to the man of God at Mount Carmel.
When the man of God saw her coming, he said to Gehazi his servant, “Look, there is the Shunammite woman; run at once to meet her, and say to her, Are you all right? Is your husband all right? Is the child all right?” She answered, “It is all right.” When she came to the man of God at the mountain, she caught hold of his feet. Gehazi approached to push her away. But the man of God said, “Let her alone, for she is in bitter distress; the Lord has hidden it from me and has not told me.” Then she said, “Did I ask my Lord for a son? Did I not say, ‘Do not mislead me?’” He said to Gehazi, “Gird up your loins, and take my staff in your hand, and go. If you meet anyone, give no greeting, and if anyone greets you, do not answer; and lay my staff on the face of the child.” Then the mother of the child said, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave without you.” So he rose up and followed her. Gehazi went on ahead and laid the staff on the face of the child, but there was no sound or sign of life. He came back to meet him and told him, “The child has not awakened.”
When Elisha came into the house, he saw the child lying dead on his bed. So he went in and closed the door on the two of them, and prayed to the Lord. Then he got up on the bed and lay upon the child, putting his mouth upon his mouth, his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands; and while he lay bent over him, the flesh of the child became warm. He got down, walked once to and fro in the room, then got up again and bent over him; the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes. Elisha summoned Gehazi and said, “Call the Shunammite woman.” So he called her. When she came to him, he said, “Take your son.” She came and fell at his feet, bowing to the ground; then she took her son and left.
Psalm 143
Hear my prayer, O Lord;  give ear to my supplications in your faithfulness;  answer me in your righteousness. Do not enter into judgment with your servant,  for no one living is righteous before you.¹ For the enemy has pursued me,  crushing my life to the ground,  making me sit in darkness like those long dead. Therefore my spirit faints within me;  my heart within me is appalled.
I remember the days of old,  I think about all your deeds,  I meditate on the works of your hands. I stretch out my hands to you;  my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. Answer me quickly, O Lord;  my spirit fails. Do not hide your face from me,  or I shall be like those who go down to the Pit. Let me hear of your steadfast love in the morning,  for in you I put my trust. Teach me the way I should go,  for to you I lift up my soul.
Save me, O Lord, from my enemies;  I have fled to you for refuge. Teach me to do your will,  for you are my God. Let your good spirit lead me  on a level path. For your name's sake, O Lord, preserve my life.  In your righteousness bring me out of trouble. In your steadfast love cut off my enemies,  and destroy all my adversaries,  for I am your servant.
This verse is alluded to in Romans 3:20, part of a passage about Jews and the law, and in Galatians 2:16, part of a passage saying Jews and Gentiles are saved by faith.
New Testament Epistle Lesson: Ephesians 2:1-10
You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ–by grace you have been saved–and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God– not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
Year A Lent 5 Tuesday
Selections are from Revised Common Lectionary Daily Readings copyright © 1995 by the Consultation on Common Texts. Unless otherwise indicated, Bible text is from New Revised Standard Version Bible (NRSV) copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Image credit: Elisha Raising the Son of the Shunamite by Frederic Leighton via Art-prints-on-demand.com.
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gyrlversion · 5 years
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Painting of famous Victorian faces from 1881 sells for £10m
Wearing top hats and expensive tailored jackets that were then de rigueur, Oscar Wilde and Anthony Trollope can seen immortalised rubbing shoulders with politicians, painters and actors.
This is the extraordinary painting which serves as a ‘who’s who’ of Victorian Britain, which has sold for ‘close to its asking price’ of £10million.
William Powell Frith’s 1881 panorama, titled ‘The Private View at the Royal Academy’, was purchased by a British art collector at the Martin Beisly Fine Art Gallery in London.
The painting’s illustrious line-up includes Prime Minister William Gladstone, writers Oscar Wilde and Anthony Trollope, actors Henry Irving, Ellen Terry and Lily Langtry and the artists Frederic Lord Leighton and John Everett Millais.
Frith himself appears in the middle of the crowd, towards the back. The buyer has loaned the oil on canvas 2ft by 4ft painting to the Mercer Art Gallery in Frith’s home town of Harrogate, north Yorkshire.
William Powell Frith’s 1881 panorama, titled ‘The Private View at the Royal Academy’, features an illustrious line-up including Prime Minister William Gladstone, writers Oscar Wilde and Anthony Trollope, actors Henry Irving, Ellen Terry and Lily Langtry and the artists Frederic Lord Leighton and John Everett Millais. But can you guess who is who? 
The incredible 33-strong cast of characters have been immortalised in the oil-on-canvas painting at a high society event walking around an art gallery in their finery. The artist in question, William Frith is seen near the centre admist a group of people (number 17)
Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London’s most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the circumstances of his criminal conviction for homosexuality
Emilie Charlotte Langtry, known as Lillie, was a British-American socialite, actress and producer. Born on the island of Jersey, upon marrying she moved to London in 1876. Her looks and personality attracted interest, commentary, and invitations from artists and society hostesses. By 1881, she had become an actress and starred in many plays in the UK and US, including She Stoops to Conquer, The Lady of Lyons, and As You Like It
Dame Alice Ellen Terry, GBE, known professionally as Ellen Terry, was an English actress who became the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain. Born into a family of actors, Terry began performing as a child, acting in Shakespeare plays in London, and toured throughout the British provinces in her teens
Sir Henry Irving, was an English stage actor who in 1895 he became the first actor to be awarded a knighthood. Irving is widely acknowledged to be one of the inspirations for Count Dracula
William Gladstone was a British statesman and Liberal Party politician. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served for twelve years as Prime Minister, spread over four terms beginning in 1868 and ending in 1894. He also served as Chancellor of the Exchequer four times. Gladstone was born in 1809 in Liverpool to Scottish parents and died in May 1898
It is holding an exhibition to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth which will run until the end of September.
Frith sold the painting to its previous owner, Alfred Pope, in 1883 for the substantial sum of 2,500 guineas (£165,000 in today’s money). 
Pope, founder of the Eldridge Pope Brewery in Dorset, agreed to pay for the artwork in three instalments over a year.
Who was William Powell Frith? The English painter who specialised in  panoramic narrative works of life
William Powell Frith, an English painter, was born in Aldfield, near Ripon in North Yorkshire on January 9, 1819. 
He was born to domestic servants, who persuaded him to be a painter. He had wanted to be an auctioneer.
He moved to London in 1835 where he began his formal art studies at Sass’s Academy in Charlotte Street, before attending the Royal Academy Schools.
Frith started his career as a portrait painter and often based his works on the literary output of writers such as Charles Dickens, whose portrait he painted, and Laurence Sterne.
In 1845 he was appointed associate of the Royal Academy in London. He was friendly with fellow painter William Turner and author Charles Dickens.
And later in 1853 he was appointed a full member of the Royal Academy. His satirical paintings often depicted both the rich and the poor.
He completed ‘The Derby Day’ in 1858. Demand was so high to see this work that a rail was installed to hold crowds back
Other famous works he completed included The Beautiful Grisette in 1853 and in 1887 to 1888 he wrote two memoirs, ‘My Autobiography and Reminiscences,’ and ‘Further Reminiscences’.
He died in 1909 at 90, leaving behind a wife, a mistress, and 19 children.
During this time, Frith kept hold of it and displayed it in his gallery in Harrogate, charging visitors one shilling to look at it. 
The painting had remained in the Pope family for 136 years until it appeared on the market with the Martin Beisly Fine Art Gallery in London.
Martin Beisly, director of Martin Beisly Fine Art, said: ‘When exceptional Victorian pictures such as this appear on the art market, they are often discoveries, works hidden away then overlooked before being declared lost.
‘In contrast, we assume all the great, well-known and well-loved pictures, the images of which are familiar to us, are safely enshrined in public collections, carefully researched and fully catalogued.
‘It was remarkable that this celebrated picture was not only still in private hands but had been in the same family since it was purchased from the artist.
‘It was purchased by a British art collector who paid close to the asking price and has kindly agreed to loan it to an exhibition which will mark Frith’s 200th birthday.
‘I was delighted to be able to sell such a prestigious painting and the only shame is that it went so quickly I didn’t have the chance to enjoy it for longer.’
Pope’s descendants, who are sharing the proceeds of the sale, hope to use the vast sum to fund education, housing and other purposes.
Frith made his name in the mid 19th century with his paintings Ramsgate Sands (1853), Derby Day (1858), and The Railway Station (1862). 
He was born to domestic servants, who persuaded him to be a painter. He had wanted to be an auctioneer. 
Frith started his career as a portrait painter and often based his works on the literary output of writers such as Charles Dickens, whose portrait he painted, and Laurence Sterne. 
In 1845 he was appointed associate of the Royal Academy in London. He was friendly with fellow painter William Turner and author Charles Dickens.
And later in 1853 he was appointed a full member of the Royal Academy. His satirical paintings often depicted both the rich and the poor. 
He died in 1909 at 90, leaving behind a wife, a mistress, and 19 children.
The first major retrospective in Frith’s native Britain for half a century was staged at the Guildhall Art Gallery, London in November 2006. 
It transferred to Mercer Art Gallery in Harrogate, North Yorkshire in March 2007. The same gallery where ‘The Private View at the Royal Academy’ will now sit on loan.
William Powell Frith (left) was an English painter specialising in genre subjects and panoramic narrative works of life in the Victorian era. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1853
Anthony Trollope was an English novelist of the Victorian era. Among his best-known works is a series of novels collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, which revolves around the imaginary county of Barsetshire
John Everett Millais was an English painter and illustrator who was one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He at age eleven became the youngest student to enter the Royal Academy Schools
Sir Frederic Leighton was an English painter and sculptor. His works depicted historical, biblical, and classical subject matter. Leighton was knighted at Windsor in 1878 and was created a baronet, of Holland Park Road in the Parish of St Mary Abbots, Kensington. He was the first painter to be given a peerage, in the 1896 New Year Honours. The patent creating him Baron Leighton, of Stretton in the County of Shropshire. Leighton died the next day of angina pectoris
Did you guess any of the famous faces correctly? Take a look at the tabbed up image to see if you were right. Pope’s descendants, who are sharing the proceeds of the sale, hope to use the sale money to fund education, housing and other purposes
How the Royal Academy provided budding artists with a one-stop shop for to chat, drink and debate
In the mid-18th century, the closest British artists had to a place where they could debate and exhibit their work was the Turk’s Head Tavern in Soho. 
Unlike on the continent, Britain had no formal art school either. Contrast that with Italy, where such schools were a feature of pretty much every city – and had been for centuries. In a bid to end this backwardness, in November 1768 a group of artists petitioned King George III to allow the setting up a Royal Academy of Arts – which he did.
The new Academy transformed Britain’s cultural landscape overnight, providing a one-stop shop for artists to chat, drink, debates, show their work and also learn (the Royal Academy Schools, which counts Turner, Constable and William Blake as alumni, still offers degree courses today). 
In short, it was an institution set up by artists, run by artists, for the benefit of artists. Not to mention funded by them too: the RA received royal patronage but never public money.
The impact on the British art scene was immediate. There was a new professionalism, and a host of world-class artists appeared in its wake. 
Today, the Academy is arguably as healthy as ever. It stages one blockbuster show after another and its grand Piccadilly home recently underwent a £50 million redevelopment. Academy membership, restricted to 80 artists, is much-coveted.
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chrismbr · 6 years
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We admired a favourite in the #AGNSW ‘old’ galleries, lovely spaces for looking at beautiful things. Frederic, Lord Leighton: An athlete struggling with a python (marble version 1888-91, originally made in bronze in 1874-77) (at Art Gallery of New South Wales)
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