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Lot Essay
The present painting is an oil sketch for the still life of fruit and greenery on the altar beside the nymph Clytie in Lord Leighton’s last painting, now in the Leighton House Museum (fig. 1), famously left unfinished at the time of his death. Featuring Leighton’s muse and model Dorothy Dene as Clytie, the painting depicts the nymph with her head thrown back in distress and her arms open to the sky as she pleads with her former lover, the sun god Apollo, not to leave her via the fiery sunset in the distance. According to myth, Clytie denied herself food and drink for nine days as she stood and watched Apollo’s path across the sky, resulting in her transformation into a sunflower, which is said to follow the path of the sun. The painting has long been seen as Leighton’s own entreaty for the light not to leave him in his final days, and holds a particularly poignant place within the artist’s oeuvre.
There are several known preparatory studies for the fruit still life in Clytie that Leighton undertook as he was working out the composition of the picture. In the last year of his life, Leighton visited his friend Giovanni Costa in Rome, where he painted an oil sketch of fruit for Clytie (now preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum) and, Daniel Robbins believes, the present work as well. Writing about this visit, Costa said, ‘It was a study of fruit, and he enjoyed working on it for several hours, though he was then ill; and I believe that the hours he passed in the courtyard of the Palazzo Odeschalchi painting these fruits, which he had arranged on a marble sarcophagus, afforded him, perhaps, the last artistic pleasure he ever enjoyed.’ The present oil sketch was formerly in the collection of Douglas W. Freshfield, the English lawyer, author, and celebrated mountaineer who had a large collection of Leighton’s sketches which he acquired around the time of the artist’s death.
We are grateful to Richard Ormond and to Daniel Robbins, Curator of the Leighton House Museum for confirming the authenticity of this work, and for contributing to this catalogue note.
(fig. 1): Frederic, Lord Leighton, Clytie, c. 1895. Leighton House Museum, London.
There are several known preparatory studies for the fruit still life in Clytie that Leighton undertook as he was working out the composition of the picture. In the last year of his life, Leighton visited his friend Giovanni Costa in Rome, where he painted an oil sketch of fruit for Clytie (now preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum) and, Daniel Robbins believes, the present work as well. Writing about this visit, Costa said, ‘It was a study of fruit, and he enjoyed working on it for several hours, though he was then ill; and I believe that the hours he passed in the courtyard of the Palazzo Odeschalchi painting these fruits, which he had arranged on a marble sarcophagus, afforded him, perhaps, the last artistic pleasure he ever enjoyed.’ The present oil sketch was formerly in the collection of Douglas W. Freshfield, the English lawyer, author, and celebrated mountaineer who had a large collection of Leighton’s sketches which he acquired around the time of the artist’s death.
We are grateful to Richard Ormond and to Daniel Robbins, Curator of the Leighton House Museum for confirming the authenticity of this work, and for contributing to this catalogue note.
(fig. 1): Frederic, Lord Leighton, Clytie, c. 1895. Leighton House Museum, London.