'Music'

'Music'

Painting details

Title: 'Music'
Date: c.1883-85
Media: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 84.0 x 231.0 cm
Location: Leighton House Museum
Picture credit: Leighton House Museum, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

Interpretation

This painting includes a woman playing a lute. A lute is a stringed instrument with a pear-shaped body and fretted fingerboard, played by plucking with the fingers. The lute is an ancient instrument of Eastern origin. It was popular in Europe from the Middle Ages to the 18th-century. The two chairs at either side of this canvas, and the footstool, were owned by Leighton and can be seen in an engraving showing the area just in front of the zenana from Cairo on the first floor of Leighton House Museum [Monkhouse, Cosmo, 'Some English Artists and their Studios', The Century, May - October 1882, vol. XIV, illustration on p.554]. This painting and its companion, 'The Dance' were commissioned by Leighton's close friend and patron, the banker James Stewart Hodgson.

Drawings related to 'Music'

Provenance

'Music'
enlarge painting

Commissioned by James Stewart Hodgson for the drawing-room of No. 1 South Audley Street, London (now the Qatar Embassy); collection of Lady Ellerman; presented to Leighton House Museum by Ellerman in 1976

Bibliography

  • Ormond, Leon+e and Richard, 'Lord Leighton', Yale University Press, London, 1975, p.167 catalogue number 309
  • Rhys, Ernest, 'Frederic Lord Leighton, Late President of the Royal Academy of Arts: An Illustrated Record of his Life and Work', George Bell and Sons, London, 1900, p.46, illustrated opposite p.45

Exhibition history

  • 1885, 'Royal Academy Summer Exhibition', Royal Academy of Arts, catalogue number 344
  • 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 195
  • Liverpool Autumn Exhibition, 1885, catalogue number 998

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