Section through the Arab Hall at Leighton House in Kensington (London). The drawing reproduces the elevation of the east wall of the Arab Hall. The stucco and glass windows installed in the centre of the west wall and at the bottom of the central dome are visible on the drawing. The design of the stucco lattices and the coloured glass are recognizable. The windows in the dome show three variations of the flowers-in-a-vase motif.

Presentation drawing showing the elevation of the east wall of the Arab Hall of the studio-house of the Victorian artist and collector Frederic Leighton (1830–1896) at 12 Holland Park Road in Kensington (London). Leighton House was constructed between 1865 and 1895 in five phases after plans by one of Leighton’s close friends, the British architect George Aitchison (1825–1910).

Leighton House is one of the most famous 19th-century artist’s homes, combining living, working, and exhibition spaces, designed according to Leighton’s needs and aesthetic visions (Sweetman, 1988, pp. 189–192; Robbins/Suleman, 2005; Robbins, 2011; Anderson, 2011; Droth, 2011; Vanoli, 2012; Roberts, 2018; Gibson, 2020; Robbins, 2023). It reflects the exotic taste of the time (Walkley, 1994, pp. 52–56), which finds close parallels in the now-lost artist’s studio of the British painter Frank Dillon (1832–1908). Dillon, who visited Cairo on several occasions in the 1850s – 1870s, recreated a Cairene interior with wall tiles, wooden furnishings, and two stucco and glass windows in his studio in Kensington (Conway, 1882, p. 196; Walkley, 1994, p. 70), as attested by a wood engraving published in the second volume of Georg Ebers’s Aegypten in Bild und Wort (Ebers, 1880, p. 96, see IG_117).

Work on the Arab Hall extension began in 1877 and continued until 1881. At the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), various drawings by Aitchison of the Arab Hall are conserved (IG_50–53). This presentation drawing was exhibited together with IG_52, which shows the elevation of the west wall of the Arab Hall, at the Royal Academy in 1880. According to an anonymous report on Leighton House and the Arab Hall, published on 1 October 1880 in The Building News, the exhibited drawings by Aitchison showed ‘the decorations as completed’ (Anon., 1880, p. 384).

The drawing reproduces the interior of the Arab Hall and its elaborate decoration faithfully. As many Orientalizing interiors, it is an amalgam of various Islamic styles, arranged around the central theme of the 12th-century Zisa Palace in Palermo. The Arab Hall reflects the patron’s and the architect’s fascination for the East. While Leighton was familiar with Islamic art and architecture through his travels to Sicily, Algeria, Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Spain, and Morocco, Aitchison was acquainted with Cairo, among other Islamic cities.

Three of the eight replicas of stucco and glass windows placed at the bottom of the central dome (see IG_57) are visible on the drawing. The delicate design of the stucco lattice and its coloured glass are recognizable. However, the iconographic variety of the windows (flowers in a vase, cypress tree, Arabic inscription) is not conveyed.