Flaming June: The Making of an Icon

Confusing exhibition at Leighton House Museum looking at one of Leighton’s last works “Flaming June” which is currently on loan from Puerto Rico.

My advice is go to the last room of the show which is fantastic as it brings “Flaming June” back together with four of the other works Leighton painted for what turned out to be his last Royal Academy show. They are hung in the same configuration as in a photo of them in his studio next door. Most of them are in private collections plus one is from the Metropolitan Museum in New York so it’s a wonderful achievement to have brought them together.

Once you have seen the pictures do the rest of the show which is studies for them, other work which had influenced them and sketches of another commission he was working on at the time. If you do these first, as the leaflet indicates, you do wonder why you are looking at some of them. You need the grounding of understanding the work before hitting the detail. It’s not helped by the works not being numbered so it’s a bit of a case of hunt the picture! A little bit of labelling would help!

Back to the end room you could see why “Flaming June” has become such an iconic image. I‘d not realised before how see through the dress is and loved the detail of the toes on the leg which is tucked under her showing through the material. I also liked the way the sea was done which I’d never noticed in reproductions. It really glimmered in the areas above her head.

I also liked the other pictures painted at the same time but I think my favourite was “Twixt Hope and Fear” a striking figure of a woman twisted round on a chair with her bare arm falling down the back creating a wonderful diagonal across the composition.

Closes on 2 April 2017.

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