Flaming June Frederic by Leighton

Name: Flaming June Frederic Leighton

Type: Canvas Print

Condition: Stretched (Ready to hang) or Rolled

Quality:

Permanent Waterproof

Fresh Color Forever

Bright-coloured

Permanent sun-resistant

Some words about the Flaming June painting:

Flaming June or Blazing Fire, by Frederick Leighton, 1895, Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico.

Shortly before his death in 1895, Leighton created the famous “Flaming June.” According to him, the inspiration for the painting came to him when he noticed a model (Dorothy Dean) sleeping in his studio.
Frederick Leighton  painted it for fun, capturing the charm of a June day and the bliss of a beautiful woman.

“I was struck by the flexibility and pliability of a tired girl’s figure,” the artist explained, “and I decided to depict her.” Leighton had already played sleeping girls several times by that point. And the theme of sleep itself was extremely popular during the Victorian era.

Perhaps no painter of the time could resist the temptation to depict a “beautiful” young woman’s dream. Leighton, of course, was aware of this and worked carefully on the composition, attempting not to make his painting look like hundreds of other “sleepy canvases.”

While working on “Flaming June,” he drew numerous sketches to find the best position for the model’s body and the most expressive format for the image. The master brought the sleeping girl’s figure almost up close to the viewer, enclosing it in a “tight,” hermetic space filled with summer warmth and permeated with mystery.

The painting’s enclosed space, the amazing “blaze” of saffron draperies permeated by the fierce summer sun, the thrill of hot air, and possibly a symbol of the fiery dream of the June nymph are all delightfully conveyed…
Dorothy Denis, an actress, posed as a model for the artist. She appears in the artist’s paintings “Bathing Psyche,” “Phoebe,” and others.

The painting was put up for auction in the early 1960s, but it was not sold for the initial price of $ 140 (approximately $ 840 in modern prices), because Victorian-era works were not in demand at the time.

Luis Alberto Ferre, a Puerto Rican politician and future governor, traveled to Europe in 1963 to purchase paintings and sculptures for the Ponce Museum of Art, which he founded. He became interested in “Flaming June” after seeing it in one of Amsterdam’s galleries. The gallery’s owner set the price at $1,000.

Luis Ferre promised to send the money and requested that the painting not be sold. Only a few years later, Antonio Luis Ferre, Luis Alberto’s son, completed a deal with the gallery’s owner, who kept his promise. The painting was moved to Puerto Rico’s Ponce Museum of Art.

She exhibited at the Prado in Madrid in 2008 and the Stuttgart State Gallery in 2009 as a result of her interest in Victorian art.

Flaming June became Leighton’s most well-known work. The Courtauld Institute’s founder, Samuel Courtauld, described it as “the most remarkable painting in the world.” The realism of the sleeping woman’s transparent material, the stunningly rich colors, and the perfectly recreated marble surroundings are all hallmarks of Leighton’s work, as is his use of natural light. It makes the sunset in the background appear to be molten gold. The toxic oleander branch in the upper right corner may represent the tenuous link between sleep and death.