His art is associated with the pre-Raphaelite movement of the mid-to-late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

He soon gave up "black and white" illustrations, working for the rest of his career in oil on canvas.

[3] He married Katherine Nash in 1885; they had a son, the painter Edmund J. Blair Leighton, and a daughter.

Leighton was a fastidious craftsman, producing highly finished, decorative historical paintings.

[4] It would appear that he left no diaries, and though he exhibited at the Royal Academy for over forty years, he was never an Academician or an Associate.