Reviews #23
Friday, 1 August 2025. Newsletter 23.
Victorian Treasures from Cecil French and Scott Thomas Buckle (24 May - 21 September 2025)
Leighton House, London
Reviewed by Nigel Ip
In 1986, the art historian Scott Thomas Buckle encountered the Cecil French Bequest on a visit to Leighton House. It presented a portion of the 52 paintings and drawings given to the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in 1953 and 1954, the majority by Edward Burne-Jones. Half of this collection has now returned to the historic house for the double bill exhibition Victorian Treasures, which includes a 21-piece showcase of Buckle’s own collection of Victorian drawings and watercolours, the subject of this review.
Connecting the two presentations are works by John William Waterhouse, whose Mariana in the South (c.1897) Buckle had seen in the 1986 display. Then inspired to build his own collection, he finally acquired a sheet of the artist’s sketches in 2006. Both are present in their respective galleries.
The selection from Buckle’s collection offers a good cross-section of different categories of Victorian drawing by major and lesser-known artists, male and female. Most of the sketches are for unrealised works, such as Frederick Richard Pickersgill’s sketch for The Industrial Arts in Time of Peace (c.1871) for one of the South Court lunettes in the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum), a commission subsequently taken over by Frederic, Lord Leighton. Designs for illustration also join this category, for example, William Rimer’s unused frontispiece for Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King (1860).
John William Waterhouse, Sketches for different compositions, including Phyllis and Demophoon. Scott Thomas Buckle Collection.
Some of the portraits are particularly arresting. Eliza Ramona Stillman’s snake-haired Sabina (c.1888) in pastels feels like looking into an oval mirror, petrifying those viewers who dare to match her enchanting Medusan gaze. There are portraits of well-known figures like the young Walter Crane, William Michael Rossetti, even a caricature of Simeon Solomon and Henry Holiday on the back of a letter. George Richmond’s vivid watercolour portrayal of an unknown lady, Portrait of a lady (1848), is arguably the best.
What makes this exhibition unique are the amusing insights into how certain drawings were acquired, particularly in an area that has remained relatively unfashionable to this day. Buckle's pragmatic, research-oriented approach has often enabled him to identify ‘sleepers’ and misattributions as a consequence of his ever-expanding knowledge of the Victorian period.
A good example is John Everett Millais’ After the Race (c.1841) - drawn at the age of 12 - which Buckle acquired from an eBay seller who believed it was by Judith Lear, Millais’ niece. Similarly, Fortitude - An Aristocrat on the Way to Execution (c.1900) by Frank Cadogan Cowper was originally attributed to his friend, Dion Clayton Calthrop, until Buckle recognised it was a study for the painting in Leeds Art Gallery.
To conclude, one of Buckle’s most remarkable collecting projects concerns Edward Matthew Ward’s A Night with the Wards (c.1847), which originally formed part of an album owned by his wife Henrietta Ward that contained drawings by the couple which were exchanged throughout the early years of their relationship. While the remnants of the album were sold off individually by a dealer between 2006 and 2014, Buckle has acquired over 90 of them, almost reuniting the album in its entirety.
Victorian Treasures from Scott Thomas Buckle at Leighton House ©RBKC. Image Jaron James
