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| Keywords: Lord Leighton, Frederic, After Vespers, 1871.jpg Artwork Creator Frederic Leighton Catalogue Entry A member of the Royal Academy by 1864 and elected its president in 1878 Frederic Lord Leighton reached the apex of the British art world at a young age Knighted in 1878 ennobled in 1886 and elevated to a life peerage as Baron of Stretton ironically the day before he died he rose through the ranks of society in a manner that was unprecedented for a modern British artist Leighton ™s great success coincided with the Aesthetic movement of the 1870s and 1880s in which a cult of beauty reigned in literature the fine arts and especially the decorative arts Models were sought from multiple sources primarily Greco-Roman antiquity the Middle Ages the Italian Renaissance and Asian art particularly Japanese Leighton was well prepared to emulate the great Italian masters of the past by his friendships with the Italophiles Robert Browning and John Ruskin and by his frequent travels abroad The enigmatic painting After Vespers was Âexhibited at the Royal Academy in 1872 and again in the posthumous Leighton exhibition of 1897 It brings us into the presence of a lovely young woman who gazes out languidly with an expression of deep melancholy Framed in the background by a niche in the wall of a church decorated with ornamental mosaics on a gold background she seems to be leaving a chapel enclosed by a balustrade with an egg-shaped ornament on the newel post The mosaics appear to be free adaptations of those in St Mark ™s in Venice The young lady ™s right hand holds a coral rosary while her left hand lifts her skirt off the dusty floor In her hair are white flowers probably a species of rockroses given the small roots that are visible According to the symbolic code of flowers that was embraced and elaborated by the Victorians a certain species of this genus signified imminent death which may contain a clue to the meaning of the lady ™s mournful gaze or perhaps she simply suffers from the pain of unrequited love Our speculations can find no satisfactory proof In the Aesthetic movement in England the female portrait was often static and mysterious with respect to its exact meaning; in this painting Leighton draws on that new type of female image which was introduced by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in the 1860s The execution of After Vespers displays Leighton at his best as a painter it has been noted that he varies his brushstrokes to an extraordinary degree with the spectrum ranging from the soft-focus flesh to the precisely delineated mosaics in the background and a lush impasto in the dress implying a dense velvety pile in the green fabric The sensual pleasure of Leighton ™s brushwork coupled with the lack of a true narrative in a painting such as this has made some critics reassess him as a Âprecociously modern artist Gallery Label After Vespers epitomizes the delicacy and refinement that Leighton ™s Victorian clients appreciated The setting with faithfully reproduced mosaics is St Mark ™s Basilica in Venice The painting ™s subject however is less the magnificent sanctuary than an enigmatic young woman Her gold earrings and beads mark her elevated social status and she gently lifts her skirt to keep it off the dusty floor Her melancholy expression hints perhaps at unrequited love 1871 Oil on canvas Size cm 111 5 71 5 <br> frame Size cm 161 9 122 6 11 3 Institution Princeton University Art Museum European Art object history exhibition history credit line Museum purchase accession number y1961-17 place of creation Princeton University Art Museum PD-old-100 1896 cite book Steward James Christen Princeton University Art Museum Handbook of the Collections Revised and Expanded Edition 2013 Princeton University Art Museum Princeton NJ 978-0943012414 2nd 216 cite web After Vespers y1961-17 http //artmuseum princeton edu/collections/objects/28649 Princeton University Art Museum British paintings in the Princeton University Art Museum 1871 Portrait paintings in the Princeton University Art Museum 1871 European Portraits in the Princeton University Art Museum 1871 19th-century portrait paintings in the Princeton University Art Museum 1871 Paintings by Frederic Leighton | ||||
