Lot 33
  • 33

Edmund Blair Leighton 1853-1922

Estimate
150,000 - 200,000 GBP
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Description

  • Edmund Blair Leighton
  • THE HOSTAGE
  • signed and dated l.l.: E. Blair Leighton 1912 signed and inscribed on the remnant of an old label on the reverse
  • oil on canvas
  • 111 3/4 by 149 3/4 cm. ; 44 by 59 in.

Provenance

Bought from the artist by Mr R. Laidlaw by 1913;

Antwerp, Guillame Campo;

London, British Galleries 

Exhibited

Royal Academy, 1912, no.322

Literature

Royal Academy Pictures, Cassel and Company, 1912, pg.134;

Alfred Yockney, The Art of E Blair Leighton, The Art Annual, 1913, pg. 10

Catalogue Note

The Hostage was painted by Blair Leighton in 1912 as his only exhibit at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition that year and encapsulates the spirit of Pre-Raphaelitism in its later phase, in the years before the First World War when life was perhaps more innocent and untarnished by the horrors of war. Romance, meticulous draughtsmanship and beauty above all else, are the hallmarks of the late Pre-Raphaelite movement of which Blair Leighton was a leading light.

Edmund Blair Leighton was born in London on the 21st of September 1853, the only son of Charles Blair Leighton and Catherine Boosey and no relation to Frederick Leighton, the painter. Charles Blair Leighton was a painter destined for greatness as a portrait painter, tutored by the famous Benjamin Haydon, along with Landseer and Eastlake. At the time of Edmund’s birth, the Blair Leightons lived at Red Lion Square, the former residence of Rossetti and Deverell, and four years later William Morris moved into the square. In this environment Edmund would have been raised surrounded by artists and men of position and undoubtedly would have trained in his own father’s studio. Unfortunately, the early death of his father, aged thirty-two, prevented this. Edmund was placed in a private boarding school in St. John’s Wood and later went to the University College School. He was encouraged to put all hope of becoming an artist firmly behind him and look towards a mercantile career. Although he worked during the day in the City, in the evenings he attended classes at the South Kensington School of Art and at Heatherley’s School of Painting where many artists founded their reputations. At the age of twenty-one Edmund Blair Leighton left his office job and launched himself into the art world with great resolve and self-belief and in 1874 he was accepted as a Student at the Royal Academy Schools where he excelled. His first exhibit at the Royal Academy was entitled ‘A Flaw in the Title’ of 1878 (Royal Holloway College) and he continued to exhibit paintings with literary titles, usually with a highly romantic charge. His work can be divided in two, those pictures depicting Eighteenth Century trysts and those with a more dramatic subject of medieval heroines and heroes, from the Morte d’Arthur and Shakespeare. Most memorable among the medieval subjects are Abelard and Heloise, Elaine, How Lisa Loved the King, Lady Godiva, A King and a Beggar Maid, Dedication and Tristram and Isolde. The two qualities which can always be found in his work are beautifully meticulous studied detail and a sensitive capturing of humanity. As Blair Leighton’s biographer Alfred Yonckney wrote, ‘Romance, poetry, and the drama of humanity appealed to him strongly from the beginning. He saw a world composed of vital situations awaiting interpretation, and it became his desire to give expression to those emotions which are among the privileges of life at its ripest moments.’ (The Art of E Blair Leighton, by Alfred Yockney, in The Christmas Art Annual 1913, p. 13)

Edmund Blair Leighton, his friend Frank Dicksee and John William Waterhouse were without doubt the greatest exponents of Pre-Raphaelitism in its last and most elaborate phase. Painted a generation after Rossetti and Millais revived interest in chivalric tales of heroic knights, damsels in distress, romantic bards and mournful kings, Blair Leighton painted the same subjects without any loss of intensity. The subject of a beautiful maid or princess gazing out over the ocean and dreaming of an absent lover, was a particular favourite among the Pre-Raphaelities, evoking the poetry of Tennyson and Malory's Morte d'Arthur but with an emotional charge which was easily understood by all, irrespective of the audience's knowledge of the tale depicted.

It has been suggested that the subject of the present picture may be linked to the story of Tristram and Isolde, one of the most inspirational of all the legends of the Morte D'Arthur to painters and poets of the Nineteenth Century. Confusingly, there are two women named Isolde (also known as Iseult or Iseude) in the romance, Isolde the Fair of Ireland and Isolde of the White Hands of Brittany. Blair Leighton's closest friend Frank Dicksee painted a striking image of Isolde of the White Hands in 1901 (private collection), in which Tristram's wife gazes out to sea awaiting the ship bearing her rival Isolde the Fair who is travelling to Tristram's side as he dies of unrequited love. Blair Leighton's young maiden is certainly not Isolde of the White hands, a vengeful wife who told Tristram that his beloved Isolde the Fair was dead, thus speeding his departure. The picture is more likely to depict the more innocent Isolde the Fair in her father's castle in Ireland awaiting Tristram, who had been instructed to take her to Cornwall to marry King Mark. In 1916 John William Waterhouse, who Leighton also knew well, painted Tristram and Isolde on board the ship carrying them to Cornwall (Sotheby's, 28 November 2002, lot 28).

An oil sketch on panel for the present picture (18 by 23cm., Sotheby's, 11 October 1995, lot 609), differs only in minor details, such as the girl in the sketch is holding a book from which she has been distracted by her dreams.

The charm of Blair Leighton’s work is in the emotion and beauty captured by an artist who fully understood, like the best theatre or film directors, how to create maximum drama without creating a parody or descending into empty sentimentality. He painted a world of romance and enchantment set in medieval times and can perhaps be regarded as being as important an influence on the conception of medieval history which was later adapted by film-makers, as Lawrence Alma-Tadema was to that of the classical world. Blair Leighton's paintings met the need of those who wanted to immerse themselves in romance for a moment, as Yockney explained, ‘We live in an age of unnatural haste and of wonderful scientific progress. The main roads and rivers bear witness to the changes which are taking place, while by-paths and back-waters and the very air we breathe are penetrated by the vibrating inventions of mankind. There seems to be little repose and no room for sentiment. Yet in the midst of this material world there is everyday evidence that the chief animating principles of life are lacking in force unless associated with affection. The audience of one remains the most potent inspiration, knight-erranty survives, prisoners of love sue for deliverance, and journeys still end in lovers’ meetings.’ (ibid Yockney, p.14) The same is still relevant and Blair Leighton’s work retains the power to charm in the yearning romance of its beauty.