01 painting, Edmund Blair Leighton's Faded Laurels, with Footnotes

Edmund Blair Leighton, (England, 1852-1922)

Faded Laurels, c. 1889

Oil on canvas

178 x 119 cm.

Private collection

Estimated at 185 000 - 231 000 USD in June 2023

Blair Leighton depicts an aged harpist whose fame has waned and is overshadowed by a younger colleague. The elderly man is shown sitting on the steps in the foreground of the image, and behind him the crowd is gathered outside the church gate to listen to the younger musician. Even the King and Queen attend the concert. It was once claimed that Blair Leighton depicted his contemporaries in a historical context. He often chose motifs and themes that his contemporary audience could recognise, such as love, fear and grief. In 'Faded laurels' he deals with the eternal theme of the rise and fall of fame. More on this painting

Edmund Blair Leighton ROI (21 September 1852 – 1 September 1922) was an English painter of historical genre scenes, specialising in Regency and medieval subjects. His art is associated with the pre-Raphaelite movement of the mid-to-late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Leighton was educated at University College School, leaving at 15 to work for a tea merchant. Wishing to study art, he went to evening classes in South Kensington and then to Heatherley's School in Newman Street, London. Aged 21, he entered the Royal Academy Schools. Among his first commissions were monochrome illustrations for Cassell's Magazine and its Book of British Ballads. His first painting to be exhibited at the Royal Academy was A Flaw in the Title in 1874; it sold for £200. He soon gave up "black and white" illustrations, working for the rest of his career in oil on canvas. 

Leighton was a fastidious craftsman, producing highly finished, decorative historical paintings. These were romanticised scenes, often of chivalry and women in medieval dress with a popular appeal. It would appear that he left no diaries, and though he exhibited at the Royal Academy for over forty years, he was never an Academician or an Associate. More on Edmund Blair Leighton

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