British artist Edmund Blair Leighton (1853 – 1922) was a pre-Raphaelite artist who created fastidiously crafted medieval and regency scenes that elegantly recreate a romantic, chivalrous past. Leighton, who studied at the prestigious Royal Academy and exhibited there for more than 40 years, spurned a job in the office of a tea merchant to follow his artistic ambitions. His work contained themes of courtship or weddings, often characterized by long, richly colored dresses, perceptively painted with flow and ripple that expressed both motion and rest. Leighton’s exquisitely romanticized historical scenes are frequently reproduced as posters today.

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