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Leighton did however live a very active public life
filling his house-studio with “sumptuousness and
luxury” and inviting guests to view his paintings at
theatrically staged events in what was then and is
still now one of London’s most remarkable houses.
From the outside the red brick house is large but
restrained. However, open the door and the visitor
is transported to the world of the Arabian Nights.
A dazzling tiled Arab Hall with a fountain playing
at it’s centre is overlooked by a cantilevered balcony
of latticed wood. This is a zenana, a place for
women to be hidden from the eyes of men –
Leighton, something of a world traveller acquired
the 17
th
century structure from a Cairo mosque and
had his architect George Aitchison, who worked on
the house on and off for more than 30 years, fit it
into his house. On the first floor Leighton’s vast
studio was one of the sights of Victorian London –
even the Queen herself came to inspect the artist’s
works, some finished, some pulled into the light of the
great north window where the artist worked. It was
here, at the very heart of Leighton’s world that the
fiery red head Dorothy Dene posed as model.
Dorothy Dene was born Ada Alice Pullen in the
working class district of New Cross in 1859 in an
impoverished family of ten. Leighton’s neighbour,
Mrs Barrington, an artist in her own right, later wrote
how in 1879 she saw
standing outside one of the small
studios opposite Leighton’s House (the whole street
and the next were full of artist’s studios)
“a young girl
with a lovely white face, dressed in deepest black,
evidently a model”
. She was spot on. Young Ada,
20 years old, had moved into a mansion flat nearby
with three of her sisters and, ambitious of being an .
Frederic Leighton at the time Dorothy Den was his model and muse