ARTIST AND HIS MUSE: Flaming June by Frederic Leighton

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FLAMING JUNE by Frederic Leighton, 1895, Oil on canvas, 47 x 47 in. (120 cm × 120 cm)

THIS PAINTING IS AVAILABLE TO PURCHASE AS A HANDMADE OIL REPRODUCTION BY 1ST ART GALLERY: https://www.1st-art-gallery.com/Lord-...

Many of the great artists had their muse, that one model that was the embodiment of their vision of beauty, that inspired them and spurred them on creatively.
For Dante Gabriel Rossetti it was Jane Morris. For Eduard Manet it was Victorine Louise Meurent. And for Frederick Leighton it was the Dorothy Dene.
Leighton was a celebrated painter and sculptor who worked in the Neoclassic style. Dorothy Dene, a woman from a working-class background, was an aspiring actress and art model, thirty years his junior. Leighton first spotted Dene as she was entering the studio of another artist nearby. It was said, Leighton had long been searching for the one model whose face and figured tallied with his ideal.
She was the subject of many of his paintings. She was, very likely the model for his magnum opus, Flaming June. The figure in Flaming June was originally part of a larger work, entitled Summer Slumber. This pose itself is reminiscent of Michelangelo’s marble sculpture, Night, which Leighton felt was one of the great achievements of western art.
Leighton made several sketches, from the nude and one clothed, to get the pose and the anatomy just right.
The canvas is a square format. Her figure is clothed in a gauzy orange dress barely concealing her figure underneath. Nearby is flowering oleander, a poisonous plant, thought to symbolize the faint line between sleep and death.
Though their association was purely platonic, Leighton took a personal interest Dene and helped her with her acting career and cultivated her socially. There relationship is purportedly the basis of George Bernard Shaw’s play, Pygmalion, and the musical, My Fair Lady.
Upon his death, Leighton left Dene approximately 10,000 pounds, equivalent to about one million dollars today.