Art I Like: Mother and Child

Isn't this a gorgeous painting? I love the beautiful soft colors and the sweet, casual intimacy between the woman and her daughter. The artist is Lord Frederick Leighton. Having only taken one art history class in college, this is a name I was unfamiliar with, so I did a bit of research. Lord Frederick Leighton was a British painter and one of the leading established classical artists of the Victorian era. Apparently, he came from a wealthy family with connections to Imperial Russia and was quite a dashing, cosmopolitan figure, spending much of his time in Italy and Germany. Most interestingly, Leighton, a lifelong bachelor, had a favorite model later in life, Ada Alice Pullen, known as Dorothy Dene. She was a poor girl from south London whose career as an actress Leighton helped to foster. Both artist and model were friends with George Bernard Shaw and it is widely believed that they were the models for Professor Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion. The 1964 retelling of that story, My Fair Lady is definitely one of my top ten favorite movies of all time! I especially love the hat scene at the races. Hats are another one of my passions and it is one of my great regrets that I have been so unfortunate as to be born in an era when hatwear is limited to ballcaps and toboggens.