In Focus | The Sluggard

  • Frederic Leighton (1830-1896) was a prominent Victorian painter and sculptor, who specialised in religious, mythological, and historical subject matter. Over the course of his career he established himself as a leading British artist and was the recipient of several national and international awards.

    Leighton's first submission to the Royal Academy was in 1855 with the painting Cimabue’s Celebrated Madonna (ref no. 569), which was met with rapturous reviews in newspapers and periodicals. The painting's purchase by Queen Victoria (1819-1901) cemented Leighton's position in London's art circles, albeit the critic John Ruskin (1819-1900) was not so enamoured. Similar disapproval was expressed by another of Leighton's contemporaries, the Pre-Raphaelite painter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), with whom in subsequent years he would come to know better after joining the Hogarth Club in London; where he came into contact with several progressive painters including, amongst others, Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898).

    Leighton's achievements were, however, also tarnished at times by doubts from the insular art establishment around his progressive style when in the 1860s he rejected accepted conventions of British art, which held that paintings should be led by an easy interpretation of narrative subjects. In some of his most exceptional paintings of the period Leighton chose, instead, to focus on subjects that were ambiguous in anthropological, social, and gendered terms. These doubts were not to last, of course. In the years that followed, Leighton's professional trajectory was such that he became known as one of the most respected and influential figures in London's art circles. Despite some early critiques, Leighton remained hugely popular in the social and artistic milieu of not only the capital's art scene but also across Europe, due to his personable character and cosmopolitan background having spent many years travelling and studying widely. These characteristics enabled Leighton to forge meaningful friendships across the social and influential art spectrum, and comprised members of the royal family, fellow artists, writers and politicians.

    Over his career Leighton did not complete a large number of sculptures but those he did compose were met with great enthusiasm, with his figurative subjects holding a powerful influence on a younger generation of sculptors such as Hamo Thornycroft (1850-1925) and Alfred Gilbert (1854-1934). It was not until the 1870s that Leighton turned to working with bronze and clay, and yet his first submission in this medium caused a veritable sensation at the Royal Academy in 1877 (ref no. 1466) with his sculpture An Athlete Strangling a Python. In common with Leighton's later piece, The Sluggard, this figure is considered to be the exemplar for the New Sculpture movement. This term was coined and applied latterly by the art critic Edmund Gosse (1849-1928) in a series of articles published in the Art Journal in 1894, where he traced the origins of this movement to Leighton's first publicly exhibited sculpture. Gosse recorded this development in his articles, stating that he saw 'something wholly new, propounded by a painter to the professional sculptors and displaying a juster and livelier sense of what their art should be than they themselves had ever dreamed of'.

    In terms of its position in the history of the New Sculpture movement The Sluggard is a hugely significant example of Victorian sculpture that continues to captivate and inspire artists today. The late art critic, Benedict Read (1945-2016) regarded the subject of The Sluggard  'as a symbol of the art of sculpture, liberated by Leighton, flexing itself for renewed activity after a long time in the shackles of convention'. This plaster cast is unique and was gifted by Leighton to his contemporary and fellow sculptor, Alfred Drury (1856-1944), in whose family collection it has remained ever since.  

    Originally titled An Athlete Awakening from Sleeping, Leighton later changed the name to The Sluggard in order to better emphasise the languid pose of his model. This figure was popular and bronze statuettes cast from the initial small clay model forThe Sluggard were executed in large numbers from 1889 onwards, initially by Arthur Leslie Collie and cast by the J. W. Singer & Sons Ltd. Foundry of Frome, Somerset. A bronze cast bearing Collie’s name and the founder Singer & Sons was also exhibited at the Arts and Crafts exhibition of 1890.

    The copyright to produce The Sluggard passed from Collie to J. W. Singer & Sons Ltd sometime in the first decade of the 20th Century. This work still appears in the Singer trade literature from around 1914. There is some controversy as to the dates of the casts with no Singer Foundry marks. While it is possible these casts may predate the ones that Collie began producing, most scholars feel these casts were more likely later and were produced in the early 20th century. According to Nicholas Penny, casts not inscribed with the founder's name were ostensibly made in the interwar years, c. 1920s to 1930s (no. 533, 114).

     

    Casts of this statuette proved immensely popular and versions are held by many private collectors as well as in many museum collections including those of the Leighton House Museum, Tate Britain, Victoria and Albert Museum, Leeds City Art Gallery, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire, the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Minneapolis Institute of Fine Arts. The life-sized plaster version of The Sluggard is in the collection of the Royal Academy.


    Leighton was elected Associate of the Royal Academy in 1864 and only four years later was made a Royal Academician. He served as President of the Royal Academy for a period of eighteen years from 1878. During the 1880s he also served on the advisory boards of the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Sir John Soane Museum. Leighton's contribution to art is memorialised at his home in Holland Park, South Kensington, in which his life and career are celebrated in Leighton House Museum. Leighton's status as one of Britain's leading artists was confirmed when upon his death the Royal Academy organised an elaborate funeral for him at St Paul's Cathedral, where he is also buried.
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