This chill February, a warm Aegean breeze is arriving in London, on a ray of sunshine from the West: The Maas Gallery has helped arrange the loan from the Poncé Art Museum in Puerto Rico to the Royal Academy of Frederic Lord Leighton’s iconic painting ‘Flaming June’, which Jeremy Maas sold to Luis A. Ferré in 1963, where it became known as ’The Mona Lisa of the Western Hemisphere’.
It was exhibited first in 1895 at Leighton’s last Summer Exhibition at the RA, of which he was President (he died the next year). It was on loan recently to the Met in NYC where there was never less than a congregation of hypnotised people around it. Once again at the RA, other related paintings and drawings will hang nearby - the ‘juice’ out of which the picture evolved. Leighton was also a sculptor, and Michelangelo’s tondo marble relief of the Virgin and Child, which Leighton admired so much, will hang opposite it. It’s a free exhibition - some shows are worth seeing for just one outstanding picture, so don’t miss Flaming June!
It was exhibited first in 1895 at Leighton’s last Summer Exhibition at the RA, of which he was President (he died the next year). It was on loan recently to the Met in NYC where there was never less than a congregation of hypnotised people around it. Once again at the RA, other related paintings and drawings will hang nearby - the ‘juice’ out of which the picture evolved. Leighton was also a sculptor, and Michelangelo’s tondo marble relief of the Virgin and Child, which Leighton admired so much, will hang opposite it. It’s a free exhibition - some shows are worth seeing for just one outstanding picture, so don’t miss Flaming June!
Feb 2024