Frederic Leighton

Frederic Leighton, son of a wealthy Scarborough doctor, trained on the Continent, in Frankfurt, Florence and Rome, before settling in London. He painted classical and biblical subjects with a polished academic finish and luxuriant colour, most famously Flaming June, and was also a sculptor. He became President of the Royal Academy in 1878. Made a baron in January 1896, he died the next day, giving him the shortest-lived peerage in British history.