Portrait of May Sartoris

One of the leading artists of the tendency in British art known as the Aesthetic Movement, Frederic Leighton trained in the continental academic tradition in Germany, Italy, and France and insisted upon beauty and form as the artist’s primary concerns. He was elected president of the Royal Academy in 1878 and elevated to the peerage in 1896. In 1853, the young Leighton met Adelaide Sartoris, a former opera singer and celebrated hostess whose friendship provided him with an entrée into artistic and fashionable society. Read more...