Flaming June

Flaming June is probably the best-known picture by Frederic Leighton, an English painter whose classicising Academic style sits close to the Pre-Raphaelite world. It shows a woman asleep, almost reclining on a marble bench and wrapped in a thin, clinging fabric that reveals more than it hides. Leighton first conceived the figure as a decorative motif for another work, Summer Slumber, but grew so attached to the design that he turned it into an independent painting. The pose loosely echoes Michelangelo's figure of Night in the Medici Tombs in Florence, which Leighton regarded very highly. His preparatory studies show how hard he struggled with the angle of the sleeper's right arm. The glowing orange sky, which looks like molten gold, and the poisonous oleander branch in the upper right, possibly a symbol of the fragile line between sleep and death, give the scene its quiet tension. After long periods out of sight, the painting resurfaced in the 1960s and was acquired by the Museo de Arte de Ponce, where it has become the institution's emblem.

Painter

Frederic Leighton

Date

1895

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

119 × 119 cm

Museum

Museo de Arte de Ponce, Ponce

Movement

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Genre

allegory

Depicts

Nerium oleander, dress, sleep, woman, flower

Share:FacebookWhatsApp