The Coast of Asia Minor, c.1867 (oil on canvas)

This oil sketch was painted about 1867 when Leighton visited the Greek island of Rhodes. 'He made many studies of the coast of Asia Minor, as seen from Rhodes, and remembered it as "that marvellous blue coast across the seas, that looks as if it could enclose nothing behind its crested rocks by the Gardens of the Hesperides"' (Ormond, p 96). On the day he painted this, from near Lindos, it was windy, as is evident from the sailing boat scudding across a lively sea. The memory of that day inspired Leighton to paint the first of a group of large pictures of a similar theme, Greek Girls Picking up Pebbles by the Sea of 1871 (Simon Perez Collection), using this sketch as the backdrop. In the finished painting, the wind is blowing the drapery so that it clings to the bodies of the girls as if wet and billows above them like clouds, with the same little sailing boat beyond.