Flaming June Has Taken Up Residence in the Oval Room at the Frick

— Flaming Junr

"A remarkable study for Flaming June, one of the best known of all Pre-Raphaelite paintings, has been discovered hanging discreetly behind a bedroom door in an English country mansion.

"The discovery of the head study for Sir Frederic Leighton's picture was announced on Friday — one of many extraordinary secrets to emerge from a 16th-century manor house owned by Mary, Duchess of Roxburghe until her death, aged 99, last year.

"The heir, to his immense surprise, was her great-nephew Bamber Gascoigne, former host of University Challenge.

"He has vowed to begin carrying out the essential restoration needed to secure the house’s future and has arranged with Sotheby’s to sell objects from the house which paint a picture of an England that no longer exists.

"The Leighton drawing is particularly exciting. Simon Toll, Sotheby’s Victorian art specialist, said finding it behind the door of a small, dark anteroom off the duchess’s bedroom was "thrilling ... one of the most heart-stopping moments in my career".

— From The Guardian

Read the original post from January 23 of this year

'Next summer, The Frick Collection will present Sir Frederic Leighton's celebrated painting Flaming June from the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico. This monumental image of a sleeping woman in a brilliant orange gown is a masterpiece of British painting that has never been shown publicly in New York City. Indeed, as a collection highlight of its home institution, the work is seldom lent and is rarely shown in the United States. The work will be installed on a wall in the center of the Oval Room, surrounded by the Frick's four full-length portraits by James McNeill Whistler, an artist who was part of Leighton's London circle. Both artists responded in different ways to the Aesthetic movement, a precursor to modernism."

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Flaming June Has Taken Up Residence in the Oval Room at the Frick

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