'One of the most famous rooms in England’, lovingly built by the leading Victorian artist Frederic Leighton

Frederic Leighton worshipped beauty, so he built himself a shrine to it. In 1877, he had commissioned his ‘little addition’, as he called his Arab Hall with exquisite understatement, ‘for the sake of something beautiful to look at once in a while’. ‘Not for library, not for reception hall, not for cosey sanctum, was it made,’ wrote a palpably astonished Virginia Butler in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1893: instead, its entire raison d’etre was to please the eye. By 1894, it had become ‘one of the most famous rooms in England’, according to The Illustrated American.

A newly opened exhibition at Leighton House, London W14 — accompanied by a book by Islamic art scholar Melanie Gibson, The Arab Hall, Frederic Leighton: Traveller and Collector — charts the Arab Hall’s development and explores its enduring influence through a short film and three installations by contemporary artists.

In 1864, Leighton bought a plot of land near Holland Park — an area increasingly popular with London’s art circles — and commissioned a house and studio from architect George Aitchison. The artist moved there in 1866, but, writes Dr Gibson, the house’s ‘construction and decoration were a continuous project on which he lavished attention and money throughout his life’. Leighton and Aitchison’s biggest undertaking was the Arab Hall, (which, incidentally, also proved rather more expensive, at more than £7,000, than the house had cost to build from scratch).

Inspired by the architecture they had seen on their travels — down to the crescent on the outside of the gilded dome, which echoed those on mosques in Egypt or Syria — the new room housed the collection the artist amassed during his time in southern Europe and the Middle East. The interior was encrusted with more than 1,000 tiles, primarily from Persia, Damascus and Iznik, which were either acquired by Leighton himself or by his friends for him. Among others, Caspar Purdon Clarke, who would later become director of the South Kensington Museum (now the V&A), secured two panels with grape motifs.

Leighton and Aitchison also called on ceramicist William De Morgan to repair broken tiles, make replicas to fill gaps and, later, create new designs for the house’s Narcissus Hall and staircase. Illustrator Walter Crane was commissioned to create a gold mosaic frieze based on a photograph of the one in La Zisa in Palermo, Italy, one of the room’s most significant design inspirations. ‘I did not realise till many years afterwards, when I visited Palermo, how closely the plan and proportions of the old palace hall had been followed,’ he noted years later.

The Arab Hall’s floor mosaics harked back, at least in part, to those of Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock, but, in the centre, Leighton and Aitchison cut a shallow fountain of the kind often seen in houses in Cairo. Beautiful as it was, however, it could also be a hazard for guests: ‘After a dinner party at which Sir E. Burne-Jones, Mr. Whistler, Mr. Albert Moore, and many others were present, I recollect how, when we were smoking and drinking coffee in this hall, somebody, excitedly discoursing, stepped unaware right into the fountain,’ wrote architect Samuel Pepys Cockerell in Ernest Rhys’s Frederic Lord Leighton: An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work.

‘Two large Japanese gold tench, whose somnolent existence was now for the first time made interesting, dashed about looking for an exit, and there was a general noise of splashing and laughter. The dark, apparently fathomless pool was rather a mistake. Mishaps like that just mentioned occurred, I believe, more than once.’ Rumour has it that, despite the rope encircling it, the fountain still claims the odd visitor to this day.

The Arab Hall: Past and Present' is at Leighton House and is available to visit until October 4.

This feature originally appeared in the March 25, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.