British painter, draughtsman, and collector. In 1864 Associate and in 1878 President of the Royal Academy. On 1 January 1896, he was created Baron Leighton of Stretton. In his childhood and youth, Leighton spent extended periods on the Continent. During his three-year-stay in Rome in the mid-1850s, Leighton established life-long friendships with the British architects William Burges (1827–1881) and George Aitchison (1825–1910), among others.
In 1865, he commissioned Aitchison to execute his studio house at Holland Park Road in Kensington (London), which was extended by the same architect in five phases until 1895. Leighton House is one of the most famous artist's homes of the late Victorian era. Leighton was a passionate traveller. In 1868, he visited Cairo and in 1873 Damascus, where he acquired Islamic artefacts to be incorporated in his studio house, among them wall tiles and stucco and glass windows. The latter were damaged during shipping. The thirteen stucco and glass windows installed in the Studio extension (1869–1870) and the Arab Hall extension (1877–1881) of Leighton House are therefore replicas made in England (IG_50–IG_59).

Barringer, T., & Prettejohn, E. (eds.) (1999). Frederic Leighton: Antiquity Renaissance Modernity (Studies in British Art, 5). New Haven & London: Yale University Press.

Rhys, E. (1900). Frederic Lord Leighton. An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work. London.

Robbins, D. (2023). Leighton House. Step into a painter's world. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, pp. 14–15.