The Maid with Golden Hair, by Frederic Lord Leighton

The Maid with Golden Hair

Frederic Lord Leighton, P. R. A. (1830-1896)

1895

Oil on canvas

83.2 cm x 61.6 cm

Installation shot from the exhibition, "Flaming June: The Making of an Icon" (4 November 2016 - 2 April 2017), at the Leighton House museum

Photo: Kevin Moran (slightly adjusted)

Courtesy: Leighton House Museum

Contemporaneous with Leighton's now more famous Flaming June, this painting is suffused with a lighter golden light, and the young woman's rippling auburn hair is more defined against her loose, pale yellow peignoir — which has a little green ribbon, perhaps carelessly tied, peeping out between its ruffled edges. [Commentary continues below. Click on the image to enlarge it, and mouse over the text for links.]

In contrast to the sleeping woman in Flaming June, this one is only unconscious of the world around her because she is absorbed in her book. There is the possibility here of a swifter awakening, of re-engagement with her surroundings, of judgement and of action.

The Academy report on the 1895 exhibition called The Maid with Golden Hair an "idealized portrait-study" in Leighton's usual "polished" manner: "the studied, ultra-fastidious [style] with which we must needs be content, since it is fixed now beyond the possibility of alteration." Still, the critic, art historian Claude Phillips (1846-1924), considered this work to be the best of the paintings exhibited by Leighton that year: "the pose and arrangement of the figure have a natural harmony coming nearer to seeming spontaneity than the artist generally brings his work" (449). In fact the museum's own newsletter suggests that the painting is more loosely painted than usual, as well as more "English." Leighton's model here is thought to have been 22-year-old Lena Dene, the younger sister of his principal and favourite "model and muse," Dorothy Dene. — Jacqueline Banerjee

Bibliography

"Flaming June: The Making of an Icon — 4 November 2016 - 2 April 2017." The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea — Museums — Leighton House Museum. Web. 12 December 2016.

Phillips, Claude. "Fine Art: The Royal Academy." The Academy. Vol. 47 (Jan.-June 1895): 449-50. Internet Archive. Contributed by Robarts Library, University of Toronto. Web. 12 December 2016.

"Phillips, Claude, Sir [after 1911]." Dictionary of At Historians. Web. 12 December 2016.

"What's On: February 2017." Leighton House Museum E-Newsletter. 2 February 2017.

Created 2 February 2017