r e v i e w 25 Re-gilding the dome in the Arab Hall (Photo: Frederique Cifuentes/Leighton House Museum) case in point. Leighton House is the former home of the eminent Victorian artist Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830– 96). Built to his exacting requirements in close association with his architect and friend George Aitchison, the house mirrored Leighton’s career as he rose to become the president of the Royal Academy before being ennobled shortly before his death. He remains the only British artist to have received this honour. From relatively modest beginnings when it was first built, the house was almost continuously extended and embellished over the next 30 years, becoming what was described as a ‘private palace of art’. In many instances the house was designed to accommodate and display the varied collections of fine and decorative art Leighton had amassed. The most significant extension was the construction of the Arab Hall from 1877: an extraordinary, exotic space conceived to display the many hundreds of Islamic tiles Leighton had collected over the previous decade. Leighton never married and he was the only person ever to live in the house, occupying its single austere bedroom on the first floor. It was here that he died in January 1896, leaving the house and all its contents to his two sisters, making them aware of some significant bequests he wished to make. They initially attempted to keep house and contents together and sell the building as an instant museum in their brother’s memory. When this failed, the house was put up for auction. No buyer was forthcoming and the auctioneer commented on the shortcomings of only having one bedroom. Finally in the summer of 1896 the contents were auctioned off at Christie’s in London. The sisters settled the bequests and the house became a museum, albeit one without Cleaning tiles in the Arab Hall, Leighton House, London (Photo: Frederique Cifuentes/Leighton House Museum)
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