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30
THE WIDOW'S PRAYER
c.1864/5
FREDERIC
LEIGHTON, LORD LEIGHTON OF STRETTON, P.R.A.
1830-1896
Oil
on canvas, 63.5 x 61 (25 x 24)
Provenance:
"G", sold Christie's, 9 March 1867 (121), bought
by Bentley for 325 gns.; Lord Mildmay, sold c.1947; Cecil
French.
Exhibited:
Royal Academy, 1865 (120)
Literature:
E.Rhys, Frederic Lord Leighton, 1898, p.19.; Mrs.R.
Barrington, Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton,
2v., 1906, II, p.384; L & R.Ormond, Lord Leighton,
1975, p.155, cat.108.
A
young black-cloaked and veiled woman kneels sideways, to the
left, before the marble base of a chapel altar. Her hands
are clasped beneath her chin. Behind her, to the right, her
small daughter is seated on a shallow flight of stairs absorbed
in a fruit which she holds in her left hand.
The
subject is a strange one for Leighton who seldom tried his
hand at contemporary sentimental genre. In the same year he
exhibited Mother and Child, now in Blackburn Art Gallery,
which also has a contemporary setting but which is otherwise
unrelated.
The
setting is said to be an interior of St. Mark's, Venice. Leighton
stayed in Venice in September-October 1864, writing to his
father on 20 September that he had made "a few sketches
in St. Mark's which I think promise well."
There
is a study on tracing paper in the Royal Academy Library.
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