Sketch for 'Actaea, the Nymph of the Shore'

Sketch for 'Actaea, the Nymph of the Shore', undated and held at Leighton House, is a preparatory work for one of Leighton's celebrated mythological compositions depicting a sea nymph at the shore — a subject that combined the classical figure tradition with his interest in the interaction of the human form with natural light and environment. In Greek mythology, Actaea was one of the Nereids or sea nymphs, attendants of Poseidon. The shore setting — where the elemental forces of sea, land, and light converge — provided ideal conditions for Leighton's examination of the figure in intense natural light. The sketch would have worked out the figure's pose, the relationship between the body and its shoreline setting, and the general tonal organisation before the finished canvas was undertaken.

Mythological figure sketches required Leighton to work out the naturalistic underpinning of what would become an idealised finished composition. The pose of the nymph — reclining, seated, or standing at the water's edge — must be convincingly grounded in how bodies actually inhabit space before being elevated to mythological type. The looser handling of the sketch preserves decisions that the finished canvas would smooth away.