{
"data": {
"id": 153389,
"accession_number": "1986.74",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "David: \"Oh, that I had wings like a Dove! For then would I fly away, and be at rest.\" Psalm 55:6, 1865. Frederic Leighton (British, 1830\u20131896). Oil on fabric; framed: 125 x 152.4 x 4.5 cm (49 3/16 x 60 x 1 3/4 in.); unframed: 96.5 x 122.5 cm (38 x 48 1/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund, 1986.74",
"current_location": "219 19th Century European",
"title": "David: \"Oh, that I had wings like a Dove! For then would I fly away, and be at rest.\" Psalm 55:6",
"creation_date": "1865",
"creation_date_earliest": 1865,
"creation_date_latest": 1865,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"England, 19th century"
],
"technique": "oil on fabric",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Modern European Painting and Sculpture",
"collection": "Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960",
"type": "Painting",
"measurements": "Framed: 125 x 152.4 x 4.5 cm (49 3/16 x 60 x 1 3/4 in.); Unframed: 96.5 x 122.5 cm (38 x 48 1/4 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"framed": {
"height": 1.25,
"width": 1.524,
"depth": 0.045
},
"unframed": {
"height": 0.965,
"width": 1.225
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 310034,
"title": "Year in Review for 1986",
"description": "Year in Review for 1986. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 4-March 15, 1987).",
"opening_date": "1987-02-04T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 380184,
"title": "Frederic Leighton 1830-1896 (Frederic, Lord Leighton)",
"description": "Frederic Leighton 1830-1896 (Frederic, Lord Leighton). Royal Academy of Arts (organizer) (February 15-April 21, 1996).",
"opening_date": "1996-02-15T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 228369,
"title": "Artist as Narrator: Nineteenth Century Narrative Art in England and France",
"description": "Artist as Narrator: Nineteenth Century Narrative Art in England and France. Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma City, OK (organizer) (September 8-November 27, 2005).",
"opening_date": "2005-09-08T00:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "London, Royal Academy. (1865), no. 5, David; \"Oh that I had wings like a Dove!\"",
"opening_date": null
},
{
"description": "London, Royal Academy. Exhibition of Works by the Late Lord Leighton of Stretton, Winter Exhibition (1897), no. 18, David, 1865, lent by Mrs. Leathart.",
"opening_date": null
},
{
"description": "London, Peter Nahum and Chris Beetles. Inaugural Exhibition. A Celebration of British and European Painting of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London, 1985), 32-35 (repr.). Text by Christopher Newall.",
"opening_date": "1985-01-01T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "London, Royal Academy. Frederic Leighton 1830-1896 (1996), no. 34 (repr.).",
"opening_date": "1996-01-01T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "Oklahoma City Art Museum (9/8/2005 - 11/27/2005): \"Artist as Narrator: Nineteenth Century Narrative Art in England and France\", p. 16.",
"opening_date": "2005-09-08T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "Possibly Henry Graves & Co., London sale, Christie's, 7 March 1868. James Leathart by 1884, London sale, Christie's, 19 June 1897 (lot 39), 130 gns. to Colnaghi. Different Properties, London sale, Christie's, 21 July 1919 (lot 121), \u00a350.80 to Sampson. Peter Nahum, London. Purchased by the CMA in 1986.",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": null,
"description": "From the many events in the turbulent life of the biblical King David, Leighton chose to depict his moment of gravest doubt. Having just learned of the death of his rebellious son Absalom at the hands of his own army, David has withdrawn to a chamber above the city gate. Casting aside his crown, which lies on the floor, the ruler muses on the conflicting demands of family and nation.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60475912"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1986.74-david-oh-that-i-had"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Turner, Evan H. \u201cThe Year in Review for 1986.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 74, no. 2 (February 1987): 38\u201379.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: p. 53; Mentioned: p. 62, no. 36",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25159974"
},
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, \u201cRecent Acquisition in Focus: Lord Leighton\u2019s King David, October 21 \u2013 November 29, 1987\u201d October 8, 1987, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.",
"page_number": null,
"url": "https://archive.org/details/cmapr3492"
},
{
"citation": "Argencourt, Louise d', and Roger Diederen. Catalogue of Paintings. Pt. 4. European Paintings of the 19th Century. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1974.",
"page_number": "Mentioned and reproduced: P. 396-397, Vol. II, no. 137",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1986.74",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
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"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1986.74/1986.74_print.jpg",
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"full": {
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"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": "Norma and Alfred Lerner Gallery",
"athena_id": 153389,
"creators": [
{
"id": 2844,
"description": "Frederic Leighton (British, 1830\u20131896)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Frederic Leighton was unique among eminent Victorian artists. He trained almost exclusively on the Continent, initially with the Nazarene artist Edward von Steinle (1810-1886) in Frankfurt, 1850-52, where his father, a successful doctor, had moved the family, and subsequently with Giovanni Costa (1826-1903) in Rome, 1852, where he painted his first masterwork, Cimabue's Celebrated Madonna Is Carried in Procession through the Streets of Florence (Her Majesty the Queen). While in Paris from 1855 to 1859, he associated with many of the leading artists of the century, including Ingres (q.v.), Delacroix (q.v.), Corot (q.v.), and Millet (q.v.), which had the beneficial consequences of relieving the ardent veracity of his Nazarene style with a more painterly approach and of introducing greater naturalism and atmosphere into his landscape studies. Settling in London in 1859, Leighton at first antagonized the art establishment, which found his style of painting and his predilection for the French \"art for art's sake\" doctrine vexing; however, he was welcomed by the Pre-Raphaelites and their adherents. The year 1864 was decisive in that Leighton was elected an associate of the Royal Academy after the public success of three exhibition pictures-a historical illustration, Dante in Exile (Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, London); Orpheus and Eurydice (Leighton House Art Gallery and Museum, London) with its new classicism; and his personal favorite, Golden Hours (Tapeley Chattels Trust, Tapeley), in which the palette, execution, and subject evoke the most sumptuous of sixteenth-century Venetian painting. In the late 1860s Leighton's interests gradually transferred from historical and biblical themes to Greek classicism. Jonathan's Token to David (1868, Minneapolis Institute of Arts), for instance, with its overt reference to Michelangelo's David, transformed a biblical subject into a classicizing essay on male beauty. Numerous trips to the Near East and to Greece reinforced this pursuit of the ideal, a preoccupation that placed Leighton at the center of a growing group of younger aesthetic classical painters in London, including Sandys (q.v.), Albert Moore (1841-1893), and Edward Poynter (1836-1919). The final phase of Leighton's development was already fully evident in such works as Hercules Wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestis (1869-71, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford). Like Delacroix, Leighton's inexhaustible creativity and expansive interests prompted him also to undertake monumental decorative schemes, most notably the Arts of Industry murals at the South Kensington Museum (1871-83), and to participate in the revival of British sculpture with such masterworks of the genre as the bronze Athlete Wrestling with a Python (1877, Tate Gallery, London). Although little known for portraiture, his half-length painting of explorer Sir Richard Burton (National Portrait Gallery, London) is a tour-de-force of characterization. His draftsmanship was also consistently exceptional. With his election to the presidency of the Royal Academy in 1878, Leighton legitimately assumed his distinguished place in the gallery of British academics, alongside Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) and Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830). Yet despite the obligations of his office, he remained extremely productive, with no diminution in output or inspiration. Of the important pictures of his last decade, Captive Andromache (1888, Manchester City Art Gallery) and Flaming June (1895, Museo de Arte de Ponce) remain consummate statements of the aesthetic movement's eroticism. Leighton was obsessive, controlling, and self-absorbed, but also generous to younger artists and deeply committed to his profession. On the eve of his death, he became the first British artist to receive a barony.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1830",
"death_year": "1896",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1986-11-19T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1865,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1865",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": true,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-03-27 00:04:23.565000"
}
}