Qualla: Leighton House Museum

Leighton House Museum: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Edwardx, CC BY-SA 3.0. Behind a sober red-brick facade on a quiet Holland Park street, a peacock-blue dome glints above pierced wooden screens, a marble fountain trickles in a tiled courtyard, and seventeenth-century Syrian tilework climbs the walls above sixteenth-century Iznik ware from Ottoman Turkey. This is the Arab Hall of Leighton House, and it is not a museum recreation. It is the private home a Victorian painter built for himself, room by room, over thirty years, until his death in 1896.

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Image: Edwardx | CC BY-SA 3.0

Leighton House Museum: A House for One Man

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frederic Leighton, Public domain. Frederic Leighton was, by the 1860s, on his way to becoming the most successful painter in Britain - eventually President of the Royal Academy, eventually the first painter ever made a peer. In 1864 he commissioned the architect George Aitchison to design him a house in Holland P...

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Image: Frederic Leighton | Public domain

Leighton House Museum: The Studio Upstairs

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Philip Cornwall, CC BY-SA 2.0. The heart of the original house was the first-floor studio, oriented north and originally measuring forty-five by twenty-five feet, with a great central window engineered to deliver consistent painting light. A small gallery sat at one end for displaying work in progress. A separ...

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Image: Philip Cornwall | CC BY-SA 2.0

Leighton House Museum: Building the Arab Hall

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Daderot, CC0. In 1877 to 1879 Aitchison added what would become Leighton's most extraordinary statement. The two-storey Arab Hall was built specifically to house the tiles, lattices, and inlaid panels Leighton and friends had been collecting on travels through the Middle East. The design drew ...

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Image: Daderot | CC0

Leighton House Museum: Victorian Craftsmen at Work

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Phillip Perry, CC BY-SA 2.0. What Leighton commissioned around the imported pieces is just as ambitious. The capitals of the smaller columns were carved by Sir Joseph Boehm from Aitchison's designs. The capitals of the great columns - gilded and shaped like birds - are by Randolph Caldecott. The mosaic friez...

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Image: Phillip Perry | CC BY-SA 2.0

Leighton House Museum: After Leighton

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Frederic Leighton, Public domain. Leighton died in 1896 and the contents of the house were sold, including at least a thousand of his own drawings - most of them rescued by the Fine Art Society. The building itself opened to the public in stages. In 1929 a memorial wing designed by Halsey Ricardo was added, paid ...

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Image: Frederic Leighton | Public domain