Leila (Passion), by Sir Frank Dicksee (1853–1928). 1892. Oil on canvas. 27 ½ x 22 inches (70 x 56 cm). Private collection, image courtesy of Sotheby's. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1892, no. 97, the painting features a beautiful dark-haired model in a red, pink, and gold Turkish dress lounging in a semi-recumbent position and surrounded by exotic fabrics and a leopard skin. White lilies in a brass flower pot are in the left foreground. A Mashrabiyya wooden lattice screen can be seen to the upper right. This work shows the influences of both the Aesthetic Movement and Orientalism. Depictions of such languorous females were common in the work of Frederic Leighton, including his Summer Moon, Summer Slumber and Flaming June. Such languid female figures were also very commonly found in the work of Albert Moore including such paintings as Reading Aloud, Midsummer, A Summer Night, and The Dreamers. The element of Oriental exoticism is absent from the work of Leighton and Moore, however, and is more reminiscent of British Orientalist painters like John Frederick Lewis in such works as his The Siesta. Simon Toll relates that the model for Leila was Mary Lloyd (90). Lloyd also modelled for Dicksee's paintings of The Magic Crystal of 1894, A Reverie of 1895, and The Mirror of 1896. Mary Lloyd posed for many of the leading artists of the day, including Frederic Leighton, J.E. Millais, and Lawrence Alma Tadema.
Contemporary Reviews of the Painting
A critic for The Academy admired the painting's colour harmonies: "The same painter's Leila (97) is a fair-haired, fair-skinned Circassian beauty, who forms the centre of, and the excuse for, a colour symphony in pink, crimson, and gold, very carefully thought out, but not genuinely harmonious, the fault being rather in the quality of the painting than in the grouping of the rich and carefully graded tints" (451). The Artist did not care for Dicksee's submission: "Leila (97) is little better than an advertisement of analyne [sic] dyes" (135). A reviewer for the Art Journal, although he felt Dicksee was a born colourist, did not feel he had achieved a harmonious colour scheme in this picture:
Mr. Dicksee's Leila, a study of a fair-skinned, golden-haired beauty in a Turkish dress of bright pink satin embroidered with gold, reclining on sumptuous cushions, and backed by a hanging of a deeper crimson ornamented with gold arabesques of corresponding splendour. The colour scheme, which we have here but imperfectly defined, is wrought out with extreme care; but the colourist nascitur non fit, and the combination is accordingly harmonious in theory rather than in realization. [217]
F.G. Stephens in The Athenaeum found the work feeble: "Leila (97) is far from being Mr. Dicksee's masterpiece. The crimson of her dress is a detestable aniline, and the cushion she reclines on is of a still less artistic hue. Her face is of the Book of Beauty type, and the work as a whole is both florid and feeble" (638). The Builder, however, considered this work a success: "Mr. Frank Dicksee produces under the title Leila (97) a very brilliant and successful study of a blonde eastern girl in bright red embroidered draperies" (350).
One of the longest and most favourable reviews came from The Magazine of Art:
Mr. Dicksee has made a welcome digression from his themes of the past two years, and has thrown himself more into colour, and that, too, with a success which has greatly justified his audacity. Leila is apparently an Anglo-Saxon girl reclining in a hareem, bedecked with rich stuffs, and glorious in all the hues of the rainbow. Drawn, greatly foreshortened, with a delicate precision worthy of Sir Frederick [sic] Leighton or M. Bouguereau, and infused with the dainty sweetness of Mr. Perugini, Mr. Leslie, and Mr. Millet, it rivals the President's Hesperides in its strength though not richness of colour, and easily achieves what Mr. Val Prinsep has often aimed at but never accomplished. It is not an "important" work, but it is notable, and that not so much for itself as for the promise it revives in its talented painter. [254]
Bibliography
"Fine Art. The Royal Academy." The Academy XLI (7 May 1892): 450-51.
"The Royal Academy" The Artist XII (2 May 1892): 132-33.
"The Royal Academy, 1892. — II." The Magazine of Art XV (1892): 253-58. Internet Archive. Web. 4 July 2026.
"The Royal Academy Exhibition." The Builder LXII (May 7, 1892): 349-51.
Stephens, F.G. "Fine Arts." The Athenaeum (January-June 1892): 638-39. Google Books. Free to read. Web. 4 July 2026. https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Athenaeum/uOZBAQAAMAAJ
"The Summer Exhibitions at Home and Abroad. II – The Royal Academy and the New Gallery." The Art Journal New Series XXXI (1892): 215-23.
Toll, Simon. Frank Dicksee 1853-1928, His Art and Life. Woodbridge: ACC Art Books, 2016, cat. no. FD.1892.2, 90-91 & 231.
Victorian Pictures. London: Sotheby's (8 June 1993): lot 39.
Weeks, Emily M. "Cultures Crossed: John Frederick Lewis and the Art of Orientalist Painting." In The Lure of the East. British Orientalist Painting. Edited by Nicholas Tromans. London: Tate Publishing, 2008 (see pp. 31-32).
Created 4 July 2026
Last modified 15 July 2026