Flaming June

Flaming June, by Frederic Leighton (1830-1896), a masterpiece of Victorian painting, has come to New York for the first time in more than 35 years, for a solo turn at the Frick Collection. Anyone who’s ever perused books of late-19th-century British art will instantly recognize the idyllic image of a young woman in a sheer, incandescent orange dress curled up in sleep on piles of drapery on a marble bench, with a sunstruck Mediterranean in the distance. She’s particularly memorable for her disproportionately large right thigh. The painting is languorously beautiful and an exceptionally interesting artifact of Victorian consciousness. 1 East 70th Street, Manhattan, 212-288-0700, frick.org.

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