Greek Girls Playing Ball

Frederic Leighton's 'Greek Girls Playing Ball' (1889) belongs to his final decade of classical subjects — idealized depictions of ancient Greek and Roman life that combined academic mastery with the sensuous beauty that made his work widely admired. Leighton had been President of the Royal Academy since 1878 and was the most honored British painter of his era, his classical subjects defining a vision of antiquity that mixed archaeological research with aesthetic idealization. Girls at play in classical dress was among his lighter subjects, the athletic activity giving him opportunity to depict movement within his typically composed figures.

Leighton renders the Greek girls with the fluid, graceful figure style that was his most characteristic achievement — the bodies in the light movement of play depicted with the mastery of drapery and human form that decades of study had given him. His palette in this subject is typically warm and luminous, the Mediterranean light of the ancient world conveyed through carefully managed tonality. The ball-playing action creates compositional dynamism within his characteristic compositional elegance.