Art of the State: London: Leighton House Museum.

Art A couple of days before visiting Leighton House Museum, Dr. Bendor Grosvenor noted on Twitter that one of its paintings by Joseph Wright of Derby, which had been featured in a season two episode of Britain's Lost Masterpieces had been put up for sale.  As is noted there, it was actually bequeathed to Royal Kensington Borough Council who now run the museum and had decided to put it on display there and it was their decision to sell the work, which will fetch a couple of hundred grand.  This nevertheless shows the increasingly precarious position local art collections are in.  Presumably the bequest was made on the understanding that it would be on view to the public and now it'll doubtless return to private hands.

Leighton House, as the name suggests, was the home of the painter Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton, and is a rare for the period example of a purpose built home and studio.  Designed by George Aitchison for whom this was his most notable work and taking thirty years to complete, it's best known for its Qa'a, a reception room with a high golden dome and islamic influenced tiling and mosaics.  It is indeed spectacular and I was desperate to sit and take it all in, but none of the chairs in the building appear to be for sitting on, with pine cones on top of all of them detering the visitor.  The rest of the building is constructed around this fancy, the most remarkable effort being the huge studio space now doubles as an education and events space.

Accessibility of the Collection.

The museum is open daily from 10am to 5.30pm; last entry at 5pm.  But despite being a council run building there is an entry charge of £9 for adults, £7 concession.  Fortunately I had my National Art Collection card so received free entry.  Word of warning.  Apparently, it's always very busy with school visits.  When I first wandered in there was what seemed like the entire year of a junior school in and a bit later an A-Level class, both of which were pretty noisy and given how small the building is, pretty disruptive to the concentration.  In the end I left and came back a couple of hours later, after they'd gone.  If you're someone like me who's becoming increasingly tricky in a crowd (see future entry on the British Museum), I'd phone and check first, especially if you have to pay the full entrance fee.



Collection Spotlight.

Much of the work on display is by Leighton himself and of these I have a soft spot for Corinna of Tanagra. But let's focus on this portrait of a girl by Emilie Isabel Barrington.  It's one of two works by Barrington in the Leighton House collection which have been brought out on display as part of an imminent refurbishment and extension plan (the rest of the reserve collection are going into storage).  Except they're also the only two works in the Art UK's database.  Barrington's wikipedia page mentions her work as a biographer and columnist, but nothing of her work as an artist.  So how did these two beautiful works happen and what was her connection to Leighton and the house?

This useful blog post from the Friends of Leighton House site has a number of answers:

"Mrs Barrington lived with her husband in Melbury Road [round the back of Leighton House -- Ed.] with the Thornycroft family of sculptors on one side and G.F. Watts on the other. She befriended many of the artists living nearby. Her devotion to Watts (who gave her painting lessons) and habit of dropping in on him unannounced, became an irritant to Watts’ second wife Mary, contributing to the couple’s decision to establish a second home at Compton in Surrey.

"Following Leighton’s death and with his home facing an uncertain future, she was behind the move to establish the house as a centre for the arts in Kensington. In 1906 she published a substantial biography of Leighton which remains an invaluable source and a number of the works by Leighton on display in the house were presented by her. Having fallen out with a committee of the great and good established to secure its future, she financed and ran the house more or less single-handedly until its transfer to the council at the end of the 1920s."

So it was George Watts who gave her painting lessons and its because of her that we have a Leighton House Museum now. Frankly she sounds like she deserves her own biography, although that seems unlikely since her key works are only in print because of the British Library's duplication service (although the Internet Archive has her Watts book).  There are plans for a new wing include a display commemorating Barrington's contribution.  Hopefully this will also include some conservation work on her painting - as you can see from the photograph, the surface has a gash out of it on the bottom right.