Frederic Lord Leighton
Born Dec. 3, 1830, Scarborough, Yorkshire, Eng. died Jan. 25, 1896, London. Frederic Lord Leighton was an academic oil painting artist of immense prestige in his own time. After an education in many European cities, he went to Rome in 1852, where his social talents won him the friendship of (among others) the English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, the French novelist George Sand, and the English poet Robert Browning. His works depicted historical, biblical and classical subject matter. Leighton was knighted at Windsor in 1878, and was created a baronet eight years later. He was the first painter to be given peerage, in the New Year Honours List of 1896.
