Members' Research Report Archive

The Art Collections and Patronage of Frederick Leyland

Robyn Asleson, Research Associate, 2013–2014

A young, pale-skinned boy wearing a brilliant blue toga sits on a rock and holds a gold pitcher in a landscape in this vertical painting. The boy’s body faces us, and he leans onto his right hand, to our left, so his body and head tip in that direction. He wears a leafy crown over long blond curls. He looks slightly up with wide-set, light brown eyes. He has round, rosy cheeks, and his pink lips are parted. He holds the gold pitcher up in his left hand, to our right. One foot rests on a rock and the other stretches long, to our right. A thin tree grows diagonally up and to our right from behind the outstretched foot, and another tree grows a short distance beyond. Behind the boy, green hills roll back to the horizon, which comes three-quarters of the way up the composition. Mountains, which are blue in the hazy distance, line the horizon under a sky streaked with ivory white above the peaks and topaz blue above.

Giovanni Bellini, The Infant Bacchus, probably 1505/1510, oil on panel transferred to panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.5

The British shipping magnate Frederick R. Leyland (1832–1892) is best known today for his quarrel with James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) over the Peacock Room (1876–1877)—the dining room Whistler spectacularly redecorated without Leyland’s sanction and that Leyland subsequently refused to pay for. My project will set this incident in context by examining the totality of Leyland’s activities as an art patron and collector. In addition to reconstructing his collection of contemporary British paintings, I am investigating Leyland’s influence on the artistic theory and practice that ultimately became known as the Aesthetic Movement. In particular, I am interested in Leyland’s promotion of synesthesia as a concern of Aesthetic painting; his role in the development of the Aesthetic interior; and the impact of his collection of Italian Renaissance paintings on the works he commissioned from contemporary artists.

Center 34

The Art Collections and Patronage of Frederick Leyland [Center 36]

The Art Collections and Patronage of Frederick Leyland [Center 35]