Edmund Blair Leighton Biography | Oil Paintings

Edmund Blair Leighton was the son of the portrait and genre painter, Charles Blair Leighton, who taught him art. He took night courses at South Kensington and Heatherley's before he became a student at the Royal Academy Schools. He started exhibiting in 1874 when he was twenty-six, and after four years trying, the Hanging Committee of the Royal Academy voted in favor of two of his works, Witness My Act and Seal, and A Flaw in the Title, from then on between 1878 to 1920 he exhibited at the Royal Academy.

Edmund Blair Leighton was a meticulous painter, producing highly-finished, decorative pictures, displaying romanticized scenes that were very popular with the public. He left no journals, and even though he exhibited at the Royal Academy for over forty years, he was never made an Associate or Academician. Leighton was, as might be expected from his historic genre paintings a collector of old musical instruments, art, and furniture. The reasons for Edmund Blair Leighton's continuing popularity are not difficult to understand, Arthurian legends, patriotism, and nostalgia for an elegant chivalrous past.

Art Movement: Romanticism.
Artists Influencing Edmund Leighton: Charles Blair Leighton.
Artist's Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.