Frederic, Lord Leighton, 'An Outcrop in the Campagna', perhaps 1866

Frederic, Lord Leighton, was a British academic artist. He was extremely successful during his lifetime, making high-finished works of historical, mythological or biblical subjects. In common with other contemporary artists, Leighton was influenced by the High Renaissance masters. The purpose of many of his works was to convey, through the narrative of the picture, ennobling messages about ways to live an improved life. Over the decades, for his personal enjoyment he also produced swift oil landscape sketches on his journeys to other countries. The style and technique of these works differ from those in most of his finished oil paintings.

Producing oil sketches in the open air was often part of the process of collecting references for larger oil paintings made later in the studio. The sketches were tools rather than works of art in themselves. As with this work, they were frequently undated and with no record of the scenes depicted. Indeed, the experimental approach of artists, the sharing of techniques and the tendency to paint similar landscapes has meant that many such sketches are difficult to catalogue accurately.

However, Leighton must have derived great pleasure from these works as he framed them and hung them in his studio. They feature in photographs taken in 1896 just after his death. Leighton was a very reserved person and it is not easy to determine his personality. It is unclear why he produced these small sketches and how, if at all, they may relate to his wider output.

Leighton visited Italy on numerous occasions. In his diary he described the country as ‘a never-fading, gentle-beckoning image of loveliness’. We do not know on which trip he made this sketch, nor the location. Perhaps it was painted in 1866 during an expedition Leighton made with the Italian landscape artist Giovanni Costa and the British portraitist, mosaicist and stained glass window designer William Blake Richmond. If so, it may depict a scene in the Roman Campagna, the area around the city of Rome.

In this work, the bold, rapid brushstrokes show that Leighton applied the paint swiftly. He focused on the mid-ground, a common technique for these types of sketches. First, he would have painted the sky. He would then have concentrated on the rocky outcrop. He paid particular attention to the foliage and the broad planes of the rocks. The brightness of the rock on the far left contrasts with the greens and browns of the rest of the picture. Landscape sketchers worked as quickly as possible so as to catch the rapidly changing effects of the light. We can see that Leighton followed this approach here.