Pre-Raphaelites on Paper. Victorian Drawings from the Lanigan Collection, on view at Leighton House Museum in London (through May 29), presents an exceptional, privately-assembled collection to the UK public for the first time. Featuring over 100 drawings and sketches by the Pre-Raphaelites and their contemporaries, the exhibition, organised by the National Gallery of Canada (NGC), expresses the richness and flair of British draughtsmanship during the Victorian era.

This outstanding collection, brought together over a 30-year period by Canadian Dr. Dennis T. Lanigan, comprises works by over 60 of the most prominent artists of the period, like Edward Burne-Jones, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Poynter and Frederic Leighton himself. Leighton is represented by five drawings including a study for Clytie, his last work, which was acquired by Leighton House in 2008. Also featured are works by Rossetti’s wife Lizzie Siddal and a study by William Morris for his only known easel painting La Belle Iseult (c.1857). In recent years much of the Lanigan Collection has been generously given or promised to the National Gallery of Canada.

‘In 1982 I acquired my first work by the Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Movement artists I really wanted to collect - an oil sketch by Frederic Leighton for Greek Girl Dancing. I had initially visited Leighton House in 1976 when I was a medical student and I fell in love with the house and with Leighton's art. I never would have imagined that forty years later pieces from my collection would be exhibited there.’

Dr Dennis T. Lanigan

With the exception of Leighton’s painting studio, the permanent collection has been cleared from Leighton House and the drawings are now hung throughout the historic interiors. The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive programme of public events, from curator-led tours to art workshop and lectures.