Homes Antiques

T

here’s a well-known

story’ says Michael

Lake head of

European sculpture

and works of art at

Bonhams ‘about an occasion during the

early 1960s when Andrew Lloyd Webber

walked past a dealer’s in London with his

grandmother and saw the painting Flaming

June by Frederic Lord Leighton in the

window. He asked her to lend him the £50

he needed to buy it but she refused saying

something along the lines of: “Who would

want that Victorian rubbish in their home?”’

How times change. After almost a

century in the doldrums in the 21st century

work by the English artist (1830–1896)

is firmly back in favour. One of his major

paintings can fetch well over £1m at auction

these days (see page 135) and other works

by the artist that once sold for a song are

commanding enormous sums. On 5th April

this year a bronze cast of his sculpture

An Athlete Wrestling with a Python – one

of only three sculptures he made – sold at

Bonhams for a hammer price of £85000

(estimate £50000 to £80000). It was

bought for an important private collection

in Baltimore Maryland. The piece had been

in the vendor’s family since 1934 when

it was purchased in an estate sale for 57

shillings and 17 pence (somewhere between

£200 and £400 in today’s money).

‘It had come up for sale in 1934 at

Hartford Hall Cheshire and whoever

bought it must have fallen in love with it’

says Lake. At this time Leighton’s name

would still have been known but his day

had passed by then and he had completely

fallen from favour Lake explains. When the

sculpture came to Bonhams the vendor was

OUR EXPERTS

Daniel Robbins

Senior curator at Leighton House

Museum Lord Leighton’s former

residence and studio on Holland

Park Road London

Michael Lake

Head of European sculpture

and works of art

pre-1900 at Bonhams

international auction house

aware it was a compelling piece and there

was plenty of interest in it from the UK

Europe and America. ‘Today Leighton is an

internationally collected artist’ continues

Lake. ‘His major works as a painter are

in public galleries and major collections.

No one is going to get to buy an original

sculpture by him and of the reproductions

made Athlete is by far the rarest which is

why it did so well. It’s the only one I’ve sold

in 20 years.’

A later life interest

Leighton was 47 when he first turned his

hand to sculpture. The year was 1877 and

he was already an established and successful

painter who in 1855 had been lucky

enough to sell his first major painting to

Queen Victoria for the Royal Collection.

He became an associate of the Royal

Academy in 1864 (going on to become its

president in 1878 the year he also received a

knighthood). According to Daniel Robbins

senior curator at Leighton House Museum

Leighton was however familiar with the

modelling process as he liked to make small

maquettes of the figures in his paintings as

part of his creative process.

‘He would make models and arrange

them in groups when deciding on a final

composition for a painting’ says Robbins.

‘They were made just for that purpose in

LEFT Leighton’s

sculpture was

inspired by the

Greek Laocoön

Group which

shows Laocoön a

priest of Apollo

and his two sons

being attacked by

sea serpents sent

by Athena and

Poseidon. It is

displayed in the

Octagonal Court

of the Vatican

Museum and is

believed to date

from 40–30BC

BELOW At

just 50cm tall

Needless Alarms

(1886) depicts

a girl surprised

by a toad. It

was Leighton’s

third and nal

sculpture

‘

132 H&A SUMMER 2017