The Accolade by Edmund Blair Leighton

Okay, I am still in a mood for art. Below is one of my favourite works of art of all time. It is The Accolade by Edmund Blair Leighton. Leighton was a Victorian era painter, born in London in 1853 to artist Charles Blair Leighton and his wife. He entered into adulthood working in an office, but soon took up painting full time. Leighton has largely been forgotten (the average person probably does not recognise his name), but his works are still popular, still providing many prints and paintings. Leighton specialised in period pieces, particularly those from the Middle Ages, although he also did paintings from the Regency as well. In this he was not alone, as many Victorian artists looked to the chivalrous past for inspiration. Indeed, in many ways his paintings can be described as the artistic equivalent of the writings of Sir Walter Scott or Robert Louis Stevenson. Some of his other paintings include Lady Godiva (1892), Tristram and Isolde (1907), and The Boyhood of Alfred The Great (1913). He painted The Accolade in 1901. Leighton died in 1922.