The acknowledged leader of the Victorian classical school of painting, Frederick Leighton was born in Scarborough, the son of a doctor. Unlike most major artists of the nineteenth century he did not study at the Royal Academy Schools, but received his training in Brussels, Paris and Frankfurt. In 1852 he went to live in Rome, where he moved in a large artistic circle which included Thackeray, Robert Browning and some of the most important French painters of the time. On his return to England in 1855, his historical painting Cimabue's Madonna Carried in Procession through the Streets of Florence was shown at the Royal Academy, where it received a rapturous reception from the critics and was later bought by Queen Victoria. It was the start of what was to be a glittering career that took him to the very heights of his profession. Leighton settled in London in 1860 and was made an RA in 1868, when he turned to painting subjects from mythology. His decision to abandon historical paintings coincided with a sudden upsurge of interest in Hellenism; even women's evening wear was influenced, Greek gowns that gave women a new-found freedom of movement becoming fashionable. Leighton suddenly found himself the centre of attention, with his paintings the talk of London. He was elected President of the Royal Academy in 1878, and became a baron in 1896 (full title = Lord Leighton of Stretton), the only English artist to receive this honour. But by then he was a sick man who was suffering from angina. He died in 1896 and after lying in state at the RA, he was buried in St Paul's Cathedral. His will included a bequest of £10,000 to the Royal Academy.
Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema was a highly successful 19th century painter who for over 60 years portrayed beautiful, elegant people in classical settings. A Dutch expatriate who lived in England, Alma-Tadema was a member of London's high society and was handsomely paid for his Victorian vision of daily life in ancient Rome. He was unrivalled in his ability to render architectural detail, archaeological paraphernalia, and complex textures such as marble. Without the authenticity of these elaborate classical reconstructions, the sensual, often erotic figures that languished in Alma-Tadema's paintings may not have been so widely accepted by Victorian sensbilitites. Soon after his death, however, Alma-Tadema fell from popularity and his work was trivialized as "Victorians in togas".
Thomas Cooper Gotch was a painter of portraits, landscape and allegorical and realistic genre. Studied at Heatherley's School; the École des Beaux Arts, Antwerp; the Slade School, and in Paris under JP Laurens.Visited Australia in 1883. Lived first in London, then settled in 1887 at Newlyn, Cornwall, where he belonged to the Newlyn School of plein-air painters. Exhibited at the Royal Academy, and in Munich, Paris and Chicago from 1880. Founder of the Royal British Colonial Society of Artists, 1887 and President 1913-28. Retrospective exhibition at the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle in 1910. Alleluia was purchased for the Tate Gallery by the Chantrey Bequest in 1896. His earlier work was naturalistic in the style of the Newlyn School. After his visit to Italy in 1891, he turned to more symbolistic and allegorical subjects, and a more decorative treatment, eg as seen in Alleluia. Manuscripts relating to Gotch are held by the Victoria and Albert Musuem, London. The Alfred East Gallery in Kettering, England has a large collection of paintings by Gotch in its permanent collection, though they are not on display. A booklet on Gotch can be obtained from the gallery: Thomas Cooper Gotch: The Making of the Artist.
John William Waterhouse was born in Rome in 1849. This early baptism in Italy's classical heritage was to have a profound effect on his life's work, immersing his art in ancient myth and literary allegory. Throughout his schooldays, Waterhouse's artistic talent lay dormant, but his young mind was constantly nourished on a diet of ancient history which he read voraciously. It was while working as an apprentice in his father's art studio that Waterhouse's ability as a painter emerged and he gained entrance as a scholar into the Royal Academy, London. Throughout his career he won acclaim as a masterful story-teller, with an instinctive gift for suspending the viewer at the most striking moment of the narrative. His numerous paintings of historical, mythical and literary episodes embroider the original tales with imagery from his own fertile imagination. Waterhouse's most productive years were spent at his Primrose Hill Studios in London, where he populated his canvases with haunting compositions of young, waif-like models. He continued to paint until his death in 1917, leaving a rich legacy of archetypal Victorian images - particularly of wistful female beauties. His somewhat neglected grave can be found at Kensal Green Cemetery in London.
Frank Cadogan Cowper, the last of the Pre-Raphaelites, was born in 1877, at Wicken in Northamptonshire, the son of an author. He entered St John's Wood Art School in 1896 and enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools in 1897. He was greatly influenced during this time by exhibitions of the work of Ford Madox Brown (1896), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1898) and John Everett Millais (1898). Cowper's work was first accepted at the Academy in 1899, and his first notable success was An Aristocrat Answering the Summons to Execution, Paris, 1793, exhibited in 1901. In 1902, after completing his training, Cowper travelled to Italy before working for six months in the studio of E.A. Abbey, R.A., a painter of historical subjects. In common with the earlier Pre-Raphaelite painters, minute detail and rich colours predominated in Cowper's work, and his output in early years appears to have been small (he only exhibited one or two pictures each year at the Academy until 1913). Following the example of the Pre-Raphaelite, William Holman Hunt, Cowper took immense trouble researching his subjects, travelling to Assisi before painting St Francis of Assisi and the Heavenly Melody, and having a grave dug for his depiction of Hamlet - the churchyard scene, exhibited in 1902. Cowper usually chose historical, literary or religious subjects for his pictures in which it was thought that 'he showed a good deal of invention'. In 1905 St Agnes in Prison receiving from Heaven the 'Shining White Garment' was bought for the Chantrey Bequest (Tate Gallery, London). Cowper was elected A.R.A in 1907; and was made a R.A. in 1934. In 1910, Cowper was commissioned to paint a mural for the House of Commons depicting a Tudor scene, and in 1912 completed further decorative panels there. In the 1920s he began painting numerous portraits of women, with softer effects and a 'cloying sweetness'. His major patron was Evelyn Waugh. During the Second World War Cowper moved to Jersey, but later returned to England, and settled in Gloucestershire in 1944. He continued to exhibit until 1957. He died in Cirencester the following year, aged eighty-one.
Born in London in 1829, daughter of a cutler and small businessman from Sheffield. No details of her education are recorded but by the age of 20 Siddal was working as a milliner and dressmaker. She was introduced to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as a model, sitting to Walter Deverell, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais. From 1852 she studied informally with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who encouraged an earnest, naive style. In1855 she secured patronage from John Ruskin, on whose allowance she visited Paris and Nice for the sake of her health. Her exhibition debut was at the Pre-Raphaelite salon at Russell Place in the summer of 1857, with drawings on literary subjects and a self-portrait in oils; the watercolour Clerk Saunders was also included in the British Art show that toured the USA. In 1857-8 Siddal visited Sheffield, where she made use of the art school facilities, and Matlock in Derbyshire. In May 1860, at a time of sickness, she married Rossetti and settled with him in London where she continued working, on romantic-medieval watercolours, assisting also with the decoration of William Morris's Red House and planning to collaborate on illustrations with Georgiana Burne-Jones. A stillborn daughter in 1861 was followed by post-natal depression and death from a laudanum overdose in February 1862. Later, Rossetti re-collected her works and photographed her drawings and sketches, from which her ideas and output can be reconstructed. Subsequently her reputation as an artist was wholly obscured by that as model, tragic muse, mistress and shrew, a process whose reversal began in 1984 with Siddal's token inclusion in the Tate Gallery show, and continued with the 1991 retrospective view of her work at the Ruskin Gallery, Sheffield.
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