Biography of Frederick Richards Leyland 1831-1892
On 30 Sep 1831 Frederick Richards Leyland was born.
On 23 Mar 1855 Frederick Richards Leyland (age 23) and Frances Dawson (age 21) were married.
On 02 Sep 1859 [his daughter] Florence Leyland was born to Frederick Richards Leyland (age 27) and [his wife] Frances Dawson (age 25).
1874 to 1877. Edward Coley Burne-Jones 1st Baronet (age 40). "The Beguiling of Merlin". Model Maria Terpsithea Cassavetti aka Zambaco (age 30). In the collection of the Lady Lever Art Gallery [Map]. The painting was commissioned by Frederick Richards Leyland (age 42).
1879. James Abbott McNeill Whistler (age 44). "The Gold Scab: Eruption in Frilthy Lucre". Portrait of Frederick Richards Leyland (age 47).
From Smithsonian.
By 1879, two years after completing the Peacock Room, Whistler had fallen deeply into debt. To repay his creditors, he was forced to auction off his assets, including the White House, his beloved studio-residence in the Chelsea neighborhood of London. Whistler channeled his grief and anger into an act of creative revenge. Knowing Leyland would be among the many creditors who would inspect his studio, Whistler painted this bitter caricature to replace The Three Girls, a painting he had promised his patron for a decade but had never completed. It shows the artist’s stylish patron morphing into a monstrous peacock, surrounded by bags of money and perched atop the gabled roof of the artist’s White House. As a final insult, Whistler mounted his cruel caricature in the frame he had designed for The Three Girls. Consigning his most exquisite frame to this spiteful purpose signaled Whistler’s decision to abandon the painting that had initiated his relationship with Leyland ten years earlier.
1879. Dante Gabriel Rossetti (age 50). Portrait of Frederick Richards Leyland (age 47).
On 28 Jul 1884 [his son-in-law] Valentine Cameron Prinsep (age 46) and [his daughter] Florence Leyland (age 24) were married at St George's Church, Hanover Square. The difference in their ages was 21 years.
On 04 Jan 1892 Frederick Richards Leyland (age 60) died. He was buried at Brompton Cemetery where he has a monument designed by Edward Coley Burne-Jones 1st Baronet (age 58).
On Tuesday the 4th January 1892 the 60 year shipping magnate Frederick Richards Leyland was travelling on the Metropolitan Line with Colonel Robert Rainsford Jackson, the managing director of the National Telephone Company (of which Leyland was also president).. Within a few minutes of entering a first class carriage in Cannon Street Leyland was gasping for air and clutching his chest. At Mansion House station Colonel Jackson summoned the train’s guard for help. At Blackfriars the train was held in the platform whilst the Station Inspector, who suspected that Leyland was already dead, called for a stretcher and had him removed from his carriage and put in his office. A doctor was sent for who arrived at 5.15pm and confirmed the Inspectors suspicions, Leyland had died of a heart attack. An inquest was held on 7 January (“death by natural causes” the verdict) and the funeral at Brompton took place next day, on the Friday morning.
In 1910 [his former wife] Frances Dawson (age 76) died.
