'Captive Andromache'

'Captive Andromache'

Painting details

Title: 'Captive Andromache'
Date: c.1888
Media: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 196.8 x 406.5 cm
Location: Manchester Art Gallery
Picture credit: Courtesy of Leighton House Museum, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (illustrated from a photogravure)

Interpretation

The drawings for this study can be divided into two distinct sets for two different (although similar) versions of the composition. When this picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1888, 'The Graphic' produced the first in a series of articles entitled 'Painters in Their Studios', focusing on Leighton. In it the two sets of drawings are explained "'Andromache at the Well,' which now hangs in Room III at Burlington House [the Royal Academy], was thought out and entered for execution a quarter of a century ago - not quite in its present form, perhaps, but in all essentual particulars the same." ['Painters in Their Studios, I. - Sir Frederick Leighton, P.R.A.', 'The Graphic', 02 June 1888, p.589] This means that the project began in about 1863, when the first chalk drawings on blue paper were made. A composition was designed and squared up, but later abandonned. Leighton returned to the idea in in the 1880s, when he was working on a warm brown coloured paper, and made alterations to the composition. When the painting was eventually exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, the following text from a translation of Homer's 'Iliad' (c.800 B.C.) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) accompanied the painting: 'Some standing by, / Marking thy tears fall, shall say 'this is she, / The wife of that same Hector that fought best / Of all the Trojans when all fought for Troy.' A guide to Leighton House Museum of 1905 notes that there were a total of fifty-nine drawings known to exist for the painting 'Captive Andromache'. [Stone, J. Harris, 'Leighton House: The Residence of the Late Lord Leighton P. R. A. and its Contents', The Central Publishing Co., London, 1905, p.16]

Drawings related to 'Captive Andromache'

Provenance

'Captive Andromache'
enlarge painting

Purchased from the artist by Manchester Art Gallery in 1889

Bibliography

  • Jones, Stephen et al., 'Frederic Leighton', Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1996, p.35, catalogue number 95
  • Newall, Christopher, 'The Art of Lord Leighton', Phaidon Press Ltd., 1990, plate 78, pp.73, 114-116, 118, 137
  • Ormond, LeonTe and Richard, 'Lord Leighton', Yale University Press, London, 1975, p.169 catalogue number 334, plate 169, 170, colour plate VIII

Exhibition history

  • 1887, Royal Academy of Arts, London, catalogue number 227
  • 1888, Liverpool Autumn Exhibition, catalogue number 1051
  • 04 January 1897 to 13 March 1897, 'Exhibition of Works be the Late Lord Leighton of Stretton President of the Royal Academy: Winter Exhibition', The Royal Academy of Arts, London, catalogue number 57
  • 1968, Royal Academy of Art Winter Exhibition, London, catalogue number 351

Reproductions

Photogravure by the Berlin Photographic Company (42 x 88 inches)

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