Lachrymae

Leighton painted this around 1894, one of the last things he made. He was president of the Royal Academy and so devoted to the ancient world that colleagues nicknamed him Jupiter Olympus. The title is Latin for tears. A woman in dark robes leans against a tall Doric column beside a memorial, a withered wreath of cypress at her feet, cypress being the old tree of mourning. Everything is stretched vertical, the narrow canvas, the column, the standing figure, to hold a single mood of grief. In January 1896, months after finishing it, Leighton was made a baron, the first British painter ever raised to the peerage. He died the next day, having held the title for about 24 hours.