Faith

Faith, painted in oil on canvas in 1895 and held at the Haworth Art Gallery in Accrington, belongs to Leighton's late series of allegorical female figures — single monumental women embodying abstract qualities such as Flaming June, Captive Andromache, and the various classical virtues he explored in his final decade. Faith, as a subject, offered the opportunity to depict a female figure in a state of spiritual contemplation or prayer, a theme that aligned with his long-standing interest in the figure as vehicle for emotional and spiritual states rather than narrative action. By the mid-1890s Leighton was approaching the end of his life — he died in 1896 — and his allegorical figures have sometimes been read as meditations on transcendence and mortality. The Haworth Art Gallery houses a significant collection of Victorian art alongside an exceptional collection of Tiffany glass.

Leighton's late allegorical figures are characterised by a reduction of narrative incident and a concentration on the figure itself — its posture, drapery, and the quality of light falling on it. The oil-on-canvas technique is at its most refined in these works, with smooth modelling, clear tonal relationships, and the sculptural gravity he associated with classical statuary. The palette tends to be simpler and more monumental than his earlier decorative works.