Lord Frederick Leighton, a painter and a sculptor, is considered by many art scholars to be the
most distinguished and celebrated artist of the Pre-Raphaelite era, the English school of the
late 19th-century. This school merged Modernist symbolism with Romantic imagery. "Flaming
June," one of Leighton's most famous works, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1895, only
one year before his death.
Leighton's only major piece of sculpture, "The Athlete," was exhibited in 1878 at the
Paris International Exposition and won the gold medal. This sculpture, along with Rodin's
body of work, marked the emergence of the first modernist artwork to combine a sense of
action and great attention to anatomical detail fused with natural beauty.
|