Leighton House Museum

Leighton House Museum
Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council
Listed Building – Grade II*
Official name	Leighton House
Designated	30 August 1961[1]
Reference no.	1191541
Location of Leighton House Museum in Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

The Leighton House Museum is an art museum and historic house in the Holland Park area of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in west London.

The building was the

Aitchison designed the first part of the house (2 Holland Park Road, later renumbered as 12) in 1864, although Leighton was not granted a lease on the land until April 1866.

The architect extended the building over 30 years; the first phase was only three windows wide. The main room was the first-floor studio, facing north, originally 45 by 25 feet, with a large central window to provide plenty of light for painting. There was also a gallery at the east end and a separate staircase for use by models.^[6] The house was extended to the east in 1869–70. Additionally, a major extension was made in 1877-79: the two-storey "Arab Hall", built to house Leighton's collection of tiles collected during visits to the Middle East.^[6]

According to Aitchison and Walter Crane, the design was based on the palace of La Zisa in Palermo.^[7] The 17th-century tiles are complemented by carved wooden lattice-work windows of the same period from Damascus. There are also large 16th-century Turkish tiles. The west wall has a wooden alcove with inset 14th-century tiles.

The room also contains Victorian elements. The capitals of the smaller columns are by Sir

The museum has on permanent display works of art by various members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, including John Everett Millais, Edward Burne-Jones and George Frederic Watts, as well as 81 oil paintings by Leighton himself.

Some of the most notable oil paintings by Leighton in the collection are:

• The Death of Brunelleschi – 1852
• Charles Edward Perugini – 1855
• A Noble Lady of Venice – c. 1865
• Hercules Wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestes – 1869–1871
• Clytemnestra from the Battlements of Argos Watches for the Beacon Fires Which Are to Announce the Return of Agamemnon – c. 1874
• Professor Giovanni Costa – 1878
• The Countess of Brownlow – c. 1878–79
• The Vestal – c. 1882–83
• Alexandra Sutherland Orr (née Leighton) – 1890
• And the sea gave up the dead which were in it – c. 1891–92

Other works by Leighton in the collection include:

• 5 albums and sketchbooks of drawings and watercolours.
• 27 watercolours.
• 54 prints of Leighton's works.
• 14 items of personal material including documents, personal mementos, embroideries, enamels and caricatures.
• several small-scale sculptures, including
  Athlete Strangling a Python
  (1874) and Needless Alarms (1887).
• a portrait of Anna Risi^[10]

Works in the collection not by Leighton include:

• Antonio Rossellino's carved and coloured relief Madonna of the Candleabra, which had been in Leighton's collection, sold after his death and re-acquired by the museum in 2006.
• G. F. Watts's portrait of Frederic Leighton.
• Luke Fildes's still life and study for The Widower.
• Sir Alfred Gilbert's original sketch model for Eros.

In 2016 Leighton's famous painting Flaming June was loaned to the museum, and was displayed in the studio in which it was created.

Works in the permanent collection

• 
  A Boy Defending a Baby from an Eagle, by Leighton, 1850–52, acquired by the museum prior to 1926
• 
  Oil Sketch for Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna, 1854, by Leighton, acquired by the museum 2011
• 
  Orpheus & Eurydice, by Leighton, 1864, acquired by the museum 1960
• 
  Study for Desdemona, by Leighton, c.1888, presented to the museum 1947
• 
  Clytie, by Leighton his final work, 1895–96, acquired by the museum 2008

Council arts strategy

The building is run by

A major £8 million refurbishment,[12]^[13] including an updated new wing, based on 20th-century additions to the original house, opened on 15 October 2022.^[14] The wing includes additional exhibition spaces and displays, a café facing the restored garden, a learning centre, and a store for the collections. Step-free access throughout was also added.^[15] A new spiral staircase includes a circular mural "Oneness" by Shahrzad Ghaffari.^[16]

In popular culture

The house's pseudo-Islamic court has featured as a set in various film and television programmes, such as Nicholas Nickleby (2002), Brazil (1985) and an episode of the drama series Spooks, as well as the music video for the songs "Golden Brown" by The Stranglers and "Gold" by Spandau Ballet.^[17]

See also

• Holland Park Circle
• List of single-artist museums

References

Sources

• Dakers, Caroline (1999). The Holland Park circle : artists and Victorian society. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
  ISBN 978-0-30008-164-0
  .
• Sheppard, F.H.W., ed. (1973). "The Holland estate: Since 1874". Northern Kensington (Survey of London, Volume XXXVII). London: Athlone Press on behalf of the Greater London Council.

Further reading

• Barrington, Russell, Mrs (1906). The life, letters and work of Frederic Leighton (2 Volumes). London: George Allen.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) Volume 1, Volume 2
• Millner, Arthur (2015). Damascus Tiles: Mamluk and Ottoman Architectural Ceramics from Syria. Munich: Prestel.
  ISBN 978-3-7913-8147-3
  .
• Robbins, Daniel. (2011) Leighton House Museum
  ISBN 978-0-90224-223-4
• Robbins, Daniel and Dakers, Caroline. (2011) George Aitchison: Leighton's architect revealed (KCBC)
  ISBN 978-0-90224-279-1
• Various. (2010) Closer to Home: The Restoration of Leighton House and Catalogue of the Reopening Displays 2010 (KCBC)

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Leighton House Museum.

• Leighton House Museum at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea website