A Deathbed Scene (in Sketch Book With Drawings on Twenty-six Leaves)

Frederic, Lord Leighton

Metropolitan Museum of Art

This intimate sketch depicts a deathbed scene and forms part of a sketchbook containing drawings on twenty-six leaves, attributed to Frederic, Lord Leighton and dated to around 1849, when the artist was in his late teens and receiving his continental art training. Leighton — born in Scarborough in 1830 and educated across Frankfurt, Florence, and Rome — was already demonstrating a wide range of subjects in his early sketchbooks, from figure studies and narrative scenes to classical and genre subjects. The drawing reflects the Victorian cultural engagement with mortality and the deathbed as a significant moment of human experience, rendered with the direct observation characteristic of a young artist honing his draughtsmanship. Now held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it offers a rare glimpse into Leighton's formative years before he rose to become President of the Royal Academy and one of the most celebrated painters of the Victorian era.