A prince of painters

Cosmopolitan, enigmatic and passionate about early Italian Masters, Frederic, Lord Leighton, shaped 19th-century British art and should be better remembered for his technically excellent, opulent work, laments Jack Watkins

- Jack Watkins

UNTIL quite recently, Cimabue's Madonna Carried in Procession through the Streets of Florence (1853-55) hung on a wall above the National Gallery main entrance stairs. Many visitors probably passed beneath without noticing it. The same holds true of the position that its creator Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830-96) holds in the British art world of today: central to its history, yet largely ignored.

Nobody overlooked him in his 19th-century heyday. When Cimabue's Madonna was viewed at the Royal Academy (RA) in 1855, the Art Journal described it as 'the one picture in the collection that will mark this year... as an epoch in British Art'. Queen Victoria purchased it for 600 guineas and Leighton eventually became one of the most fashionable artists of her reign. Of sufficient means not to depend entirely on selling canvases, he produced technically excellent, opulently staged historical and mythological works and moved with ease among the aristocracy. His studio house in London's Holland Park, Kensington, W14 (now Leighton House museum), became a palace of art notable for its Moorish décor. President of the RA from 1878, he was made a baronet in 1886, elevated to the peerage one day before his death (as Lord Leighton, Baron of Stretton, he is the only British artist so honoured) and given a funeral in St Paul's.

It's not difficult to see why his monumental paintings, with their polish and obscure classical references, are less admired today. He was a contemporary of Manet and Degas by the time of Leighton's death, Gauguin had already sailed for the South Seas and Picasso's Blue Period was five years ahead -yet he appears to be from a different age.