La luna di miele del pittore

By the mid-1860s Frederic Leighton was making his name in London on grand classical and mythological subjects, often nudes drawn from antiquity. This picture is nothing like that. A young painter sits absorbed in his sketchbook, and his new wife leans in against him, her head close to his, watching his hands work. It is a private, ordinary moment, unusually tender for him. Leighton painted it around 1864 while travelling in Europe and steeping himself in Italian Renaissance art, and you can feel that in the calm, sculptural way the two figures are folded together. Behind them an orange tree gave him trouble; up close the fruit looks oddly enamelled.