Study for 'Captive Andromache': Composition

• enlarge drawing

Drawing details

Title: Study for 'Captive Andromache': Composition
Date: c.1887
Media: Pencil on tracing paper
Dimensions: 14.1 x 39.0 cm
Location: Royal Academy of Arts, London
Picture credit: Royal Academy of Arts, London
Reference number: 04/1155
Inscriptions: Inscribed lower right "Captive Andromache 1888 No 47" in pen and ink.

Interpretation

This composition is an early idea for the painting 'Captive Andromache' and differs considerably from the finished painting. Leighton first made studies for this work some 20 years before completing the painting. This is demonstrated by a thumbnail sketch for it in the Leighton House Collection, which is on the same sheet as studies for the painting 'Hercules Wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestis' (1869-71, Wadsworth Athenaeum, Connecticut).

Description

Outline Traced study for the composition of the painting 'Captive Andromache' (1888, Manchester Art Gallery). This tracing shows a frieze-like composition with the central figures walking in profile along a flat path. A distracted Andromache turns her face away from the viewer to look down on two women holding an infant. Leighton retained this idea but altered the arrangement so that Andromache instead reflects on the family unit in the right foreground of the canvas. As in the finished painting, there are fewer figures on the right hand side of the composition here (as opposed to the larger groups evident in some of the other tracings), though the poses are not identical. On the left, is an old man sitting on the ground who Leighton subsequently replaced with an old woman spinning. A standing man playing pipes, or a sculpture of the same, on the far left does not feature in the finished work. 

Provenance

Bequeathed by the artist to his sisters, Mrs. Augusta Matthews (nTe Augusta Neunburg Leighton, 1835-1919) and Mrs. Alexandra Orr (nTe Alexandra Leighton, 1828-1903); presented to the Royal Academy of Arts, London by Matthews and Orr in 1896 

Bibliography

• Ormond, LeonTe and Richard, 'Lord Leighton', Yale University Press, London, 1975, p.169 (listed under catalogue number 334)