The erotic masterpiece we nearly lost
Canada Goose sale This is how the story goes: one day in 1962, an Irish builder walked into a junk shop on Battersea Rise in south London, carrying canada goose jacket outlet sale a painting in an elaborate gilt frame. He said that he found it behind a panel above a chimneypiece while demolishing a vacant house nearby. Hoping to flog it for a few quid, he haggled with the shop owner, before agreeing a price of Unbeknownst to him, the picture was Flaming June (1895), by the eminent Victorian artist Frederic Leighton. Canada Goose sale
Canada Goose Outlet probably a cock and bull story, says Daniel Robbins, senior curator of the Leighton House Museum in west London, referring to this dramatic tale of the picture rediscovery. (Art historians remain uncertain about its whereabouts between 1930 and 1962.) it has attached itself to the myth of the painting. So low, indeed, that even a ravishing masterpiece such as Flaming June which depicts a sexy young girl in a blazing, semi transparent saffron robe, sleeping on a marble canada goose outlet london bench beside a sparkling sea could go unrecognised. Canada Goose Outlet
canada goose black friday sale In the 1960s the frame was valued more highly than the picture itself canada goose black friday sale
Canada Goose Outlet Having added canada goose outlet buffalo Flaming June to his stock, the shop owner struggled to shift it: supposedly, he found it easier to canada goose vest outlet sell its eye catching frame, without the painting in other words, the frame, at that moment, was valued more highly than the picture itself. Canada Goose Outlet
canada goose deals Not long afterwards, though, Jeremy Maas, a far sighted art dealer with an interest in Victorian painting, acquired it. He offered Flaming June to various British galleries, including the Tate, but they all turned it down. Eventually, in the summer of 1963, Maas sold it for to a wealthy industrialist called Luis A Ferr who had founded a new museum in Puerto Rico. People who have never heard canada goose outlet woodbury of Leighton are familiar with Flaming June. Over the past half century, it has been endlessly reproduced, on everything from posters and album canada goose outlet store new york covers to mugs, fridge magnets and jigsaw puzzles. canada goose deals
Canada Goose Parka Already by the it was canada goose outlet phone number generating more money annually from fees for reproduction rights than the cost of the painting itself back in 1963. And it canada goose outlet store near me remains a touchstone for popular culture: in 2013, for instance, the cover of Vogue magazine goose outlet canada presented the redheaded American actress Jessica Chastain posing in the manner of Leighton masterpiece. Flaming June has become a canada goose outlet ontario celebrity in its own right. Canada Goose Parka
cheap Canada Goose Yet, according to Robbins, it now free of its original context, which is why he wanted to mount Flaming June: The Making of an Icon, a new exhibition at Leighton House. For only the second time in its history (the painting was also displayed at Leighton studio house in 1930, to mark the centenary of his birth), Flaming June has home It was here that the artist painted it, before displaying it, briefly, to a curious public. cheap Canada Goose
cheap Canada Goose What, then, do we glean canada goose outlet trillium parka black from considering Flaming June in this context? Well, for one thing, we discover a great deal about how it came into being. A series of beautiful white and black chalk drawings on brown paper reveal that the idea for the painting struck Leighton when he saw a weary model resting while coiled up in an armchair, with one foot tucked behind her knee, probably at the end of a long session in the studio. He then worked on this motif first sketching the model nude, before moving on to studies that added flickering drapery around her like a force field. cheap Canada Goose
canada goose black friday sale Moreover, the contortion of the final composition in particular canada goose outlet 2015 the slumbering girl peculiarly elongated and prominent thigh also owes something to Michelangelo Night, one of four figures that he sculpted for the Medici tombs in the church canada goose outlet location of San Lorenzo in Florence. Leighton so admired it that he kept a reproduction in his studio, beneath the large north window. canada goose black friday sale
buy canada goose jacket cheap Flaming June deploys colour in an intense, incendiary way, like a chromatic fireball buy canada goose jacket cheap
canada goose clearance Above all, though, the exhibition at Leighton House reveals that the painting was atypical in terms of both Leighton output and canada goose outlet usa Victorian painting more generally. The artist painted the pictures currently on canada goose outlet display at Leighton House over canada goose outlet toronto location the autumn and winter of 1894 95, soon after suffering the first of the angina attacks that would eventually kill him at the start of 1896. Each one represents a single female figure. But Flaming June is the only one to deploy colour in such an intense, canada goose outlet online store even incendiary way, like a chromatic canada goose outlet orlando fireball. canada goose clearance
Canada Goose online Leighton it was first exhibited, critics rhapsodised about its various shades of orange ( yellow and gold were two of the more colourful descriptions). canada goose outlet in vancouver These give the composition its fantastical, dreamlike quality. Unlike a lot of Victorian painting, which relies http://www.mycanadagoosejacket.org on narrative and recreates specific moments from canada goose jacket outlet uk history, Flaming June feels timeless, despite its vaguely ancient Mediterranean setting. Canada Goose online
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canada goose coats on sale The intensity of its colour seems to signify not something out there, in the world around us, but something within: the internal dreamscape of the girl, perhaps, canada goose outlet reviews or the artist acute emotional response to his subject. canada goose coats on sale
Canada Goose online Admittedly, this notion runs counter to traditional perceptions of Leighton, canada goose outlet official who was notoriously private. Yet the model for Flaming June was most likely the actress Dorothy Dene, whom Leighton met in 1879, when she was just 19 years old. Canada Goose online
cheap Canada Goose The pair became so close some canada goose parka outlet people even referred to Dene, cattily, as Leighton that the artist left her the substantial sum of after his death. canada goose jacket uk If Flaming June was unusual in terms of its palette, then, perhaps it was also atypical in offering a kind of revelatory autobiographical statement. cheap Canada Goose
Canada Goose sale Some art historians focus on the plant that provides a splash of crimson towards the top of the composition. This is oleander, a flowering shrub. Because oleander is highly poisonous, it invites us to understand the painting evocation of oblivion symbolically, as a meditation on death perhaps even Leighton own. Canada Goose sale
cheap Canada Goose Whatever the merits of this theory, Robbins says that Leighton the jackpot with Flaming June. find it moving that Leighton did so right in the twilight of his career and that he had no idea he done something people would forever canada goose outlet in canada associate with him. continues: a superficial level, Flaming June is a seductive image of a girl asleep against the Mediterranean sun. It speaks of warmth and sensuousness. And your eye is endlessly intrigued canada goose coats uk by its form and colour. Robbins smiles. not to like? Sooke is art critic of the Daily Telegraph. cheap Canada Goose
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