Edmund Blair Leighton ( 1852 – 1922) - English historical painter - ArtLiveAndBeauty

• Edmund Blair Leighton - “an outstanding outsider” who became an artist against the wishes of the family •

Edmund Leighton became the only man in the family at only 3 years old: his father, artist Charles Leighton, died at 31. Edmund's mother was left alone with her five-year-old daughter, three-year-old son and an unborn baby. She opened a boarding school for girls, the income from which was enough to support the family.

However, the mother considered the current environment unsuitable for the boy - and sent Edmund to a boarding school in St. Johns Woods. Of the three children, he was the only one who was separated from his family. Leighton recalled that at the boarding school he ate poorly and was extremely unhappy.

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Although Edmund liked to draw from a young age, he did not immediately begin his career as an artist: his mother and uncle pressed him seriously. They insisted that Leighton should be more stable and reliable than painting to support his mother and two sisters. Therefore, he began working in the tea business.

However, Edmund was not going to give up so easily. He devoted all his free time to drawing, and from his salary he saved as much money as he could for study. Leighton began attending evening classes at the South Kensington School of Art, later paying for feedback to teachers at Heatherley's School of Art. At 21, he announced to his family that he would be an artist at all costs - and entered the Royal Academy of Arts. To continue to pay for training, Leighton made illustrations for Cassell & Co. and for Harper's Bazaar magazine.

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Edmund Leighton created detailed paintings, adhering to romanticism and pre-Raphaelitism. He exhibited annually at the Royal Academy of Arts for over forty years, but was never a member, although he was personally adored by two Academy Presidents, Frederick Lord Leighton and Frank Dixie. In The Year's Art of 1893, Leighton was called the “Outstanding Outsider.”

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Edmund Blair Leighton (1852 - 1922). Romanticism, pre-Raphaelitism.

Names and dates of creation are indicated under each picture