The Arts of Industry as Applied to Peace (sketch for a wall painting in the Victoria and Albert Museum)

The companion piece to his War mural cartoon, Leighton's Arts of Industry as Applied to Peace (1872) presented industry in its constructive, civilizing aspect — the arts and crafts of peace as the expression of human creativity and social progress. Together the two panels for the Victoria and Albert Museum presented Leighton's vision of the arts as a unifying force in human civilization, drawing on classical precedents to make an argument relevant to the industrial present. The V&A's mission of connecting art and industry made the commission ideologically coherent, and Leighton's classical training gave the iconographic program historical depth.

As a companion piece to the War cartoon, this work shares its compositional approach — clear figural groups, classical drapery, architectural framing — but with a lighter, more harmonious arrangement reflecting the peaceful subject. Leighton's draftsmanship ensures that figures maintain proportion and dignity even in preparatory form.