World class collection of Pre-Raphaelite and Victorian Art heads to Leighton House Museum

Works from one of the world’s best private collections of Pre-Raphaelite and Victorian art are to be shown to the public in the UK for the first time this spring in the apt setting of Lord Frederic Leighton’s Victorian palace of art, Leighton House Museum in London.

Featuring works by some of the titans of Victorian art, the John Schaeffer Collection includes the colour sketch for Leighton’s most famous work, Flaming June, as well as pieces by John William Waterhouse, William Holman Hunt, GF Watts, Solomon J Solomon and the sculptor Alfred Gilbert.

The famous house, which was sympathetically restored in 2010, was Leighton’s home and studio for 30 years. It will accomodate the artworks throughout its opulent interiors including the drawing room, dining room, silk room and Leighton’s famously spacious studio.

Australia-based businessman and art collector Schaeffer describes the Holland Park house as “one of my favourite London museums”.

“It will be a great pleasure for me to see my collection hanging in the home of an artist that I have admired for so long and whose work I have been fortunate to collect.”

• Victorian Visions: Pre-Raphaelite and Nineteenth-Century Art from the John Schaeffer Collection runs from April 26 - Sunday September 23 2012.