Study for the Painting "Sybil"

Frederic Leighton’s academic training taught him to prepare numerous figure and drapery studies for his paintings. This drawing of a classically robed woman is a study for a large oil painting, Sybil, which he exhibited in 1889. Her pose is reminiscent of Albrecht Dürer’s figure in Melencolia, while her sculptural presence reflects Leighton’s debt to the monumental female figures of Michelangelo. By the 1880s, Leighton’s highly finished style was falling out of fashion in favor of the looser, more spontaneous approach of Impressionism. In this climate, viewers appreciated his energetic charcoal drawings, such as this one, which contemporary magazines regularly reproduced.