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  • FLAMING JUNE UNDER THE HAMMER IN JULY

    FREDERIC, LORD LEIGHTON, P.R.A., R.W.S 1830-1896 STUDY FOR FLAMING JUNE Coiurtesy Sotheby's

    FREDERIC, LORD LEIGHTON, P.R.A., R.W.S
    1830-1896
    STUDY FOR FLAMING JUNE Coiurtesy Sotheby’s

    The only known head study for one of the most famous masterpieces of the nineteenth century has re-emerged 120 years after it was last reproduced in an art magazine in 1895. The important rediscovery of pencil and white chalk study for Frederic, Lord Leighton’s Flaming June provides the missing link in the preparatory work for the painting that has become known as ‘The Mona Lisa of the Southern Hemisphere’.  It is from the collection of Mary, Duchess of Roxburghe.

    The work was found hanging discreetly on a bedroom wall at West Horsley Place, her quintessentially English red-brick sixteenth-century mansion and 400-acre Surrey estate.  Contents from this extraordinary home – frozen in time – will be offered at Sotheby’s in London on May 27 and 28.  The drawing comes up at a separate sale of Victorian, Pre-Raphaelite and British Impressionist art in London on July 15.  It is estimated at £40,000-60,000. Pictures and objects brought together by the Crewe family, one of Britain’s greatest aristocratic families, were consolidated at West Horsley Place from numerous great houses across Britain. It is likely that the Leighton drawing was purchased from the artist’s studio after his death.  

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