Colour study for 'Cymon and Iphigenia'

Cymon and Iphigenia is a story from Boccaccio's Decameron, retold in English by Dryden: Cymon, a rough and intellectually limited youth, encounters the beautiful Iphigenia sleeping in a field and is so transformed by her beauty that he becomes civilized and wise. The narrative thus encodes the Victorian belief in beauty as a civilizing and moral force — a conviction that Leighton, as the preeminent painter of ideal beauty, could hardly avoid. This 1884 color study at the Art Gallery of New South Wales represents his preparatory process for the full composition, exploring the color relationships and figure arrangement before committing to the final canvas. Preparatory studies of this kind are valuable both for their evidence of artistic process and for the loose, exploratory quality that finished works suppress.

A color study for a major composition allows exploration of palette and tonal relationships in advance of final decisions. The handling is typically looser and more experimental than the finished work, with adjustments visible as the artist works through color problems. Figure placement and compositional balance are resolved here rather than left to the final canvas. The study's value for later scholars lies in precisely its incomplete, searching quality.