Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. Images are beautiful bright and vivid. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> In the Magazine of Art for 1885 Leighton was described as ‘with the exception of Sir Joshua Reynolds the most skilful administrator and most enlightened President that the Academy has ever had. During Leighton’s tenure the Royal Academy defined itself and went forward as it had under Reynolds’s care. Both Presidents confirmed its role as the representative body for the art world of their day. If Reynolds as the first President established the Academy in this leading position Leighton’s task was a more defensive one. In the later years of his presidency he sought to maintain the Academy’s position in a world increasingly dominated by new styles new organisations and new exhibition galleries. Leighton more or less held the pass but with great difficulty. The comparison with Reynolds has often been made and it was one that Leighton himself must have enjoyed. The Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) presented him with a print of what was probably Johann Zoffany’s group portrait of Royal Academicians (Royal Col.) because the representation of Reynolds with the Prince Regent ‘reminded me of myself and you. Leighton owned four paintings by Reynolds including the double portrait of Lord Rockingham with Edmund Burke (Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge) which he purchased appropriately enough at the sale of Sir Francis Grant who had preceded him as President. In the last weeks of Leighton’s life Percy Fitzgerald marked the artist’s peerage with the gift of Reynolds’s Discourses ‘a presentation one to Burke. It was fitting that the modern President should have it. (MP)