Study for Flaming June, c. 1895. Black and white chalk on brown paper. Courtesy Bristol's City Museum and Art Gallery.

Drawings by Victorian artist Frederic, Lord Leighton including some that have never been publicly exhibited before are now showing at Bristol's City Museum and Art Gallery until Sunday September 2 2007.

A Victorian Master, Drawings by Frederic, Lord Leighton, highlights one of the largest and most important collections of drawings by Leighton in the country and follows on from their conservation, from November 2006 to February 2007, at Leighton House Museum in London.

Leighton was hugely successful and popular in his lifetime and as well as being a painter and sculptor is today acknowledged as one of the great Victorian draughtsmen.

Head of Dorothy Dene, 1881. Pencil on paper. Courtesy Bristol's City Museum and Art Gallery.
Dorothy Dene was Leighton’s favourite and best-known model and was used for his last painting, 'Clytie', which is included in the exhibition.

He was the first English painter to be given a peerage and like many of his contemporaries drew heavily on classical mythology, often adorning his paintings with classically draped and tragically beautiful female figures.

His finished works are today renowned and loved for their rich colouring and minute attention to detail, especially with regard to his rendering of fabrics and drapery, showing a skill and experience that few could match

The exhibition consists of more than 50 works from all stages of Leighton's career, from early studies made as a student in Frankfurt in his late teens, to the very last drawings he was working on before his death.

During a trip to Capri in 1859, Leighton drew the extraordinary Study of a Lemon Tree in which each leaf and branch is painstakingly reproduced to his customary high standard.

This study is on show for the first time ever beside the other drawings Leighton made on this trip, together with Clytie, the final emotive painting Leighton was working on at the time of his death.

The free exhibition has been supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund. See the Leighton House website to search a database of Lord Leighton's drawings.