[5] When he was 24 he was in Florence; he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti, and painted the procession of the Cimabue Madonna through the Borgo Allegri.

By his late teens, he was living with his family in Frankfurt, Germany and had already visited many of Europe's major cities, including Florence and Rome, places which he would return to on a great many occasions over the next decades.

By his late twenties, extended periods had been spent living in Rome and then Paris and Leighton had made his first trip outside Europe, travelling to north Africa in 1857.

The countries that Leighton visited on at least one occasion include Austria, Algeria, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lebanon, Morocco, The Netherlands, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland, Syria, and Turkey.

American art critic Earl Shinn claimed at the time that "Except Leighton, there is scarce any one capable of putting up a correct frescoed figure in the archway of the Kensington Museum.

He was the first President of the Committee commissioning the Survey of London which documented the capital's principal buildings and public art.

[8] He certainly enjoyed an intense and romantically tinged relationship with the poet Henry William Greville whom he met in Florence in 1856.

No definite primary evidence has yet come to light that effectively dispels the secrecy that Leighton built up around himself, although it is clear that he did court a circle of younger men around his artistic studio.

At his funeral, on 3 February 1896, his coffin was carried into St Paul's Cathedral,[16] past a guard of honour formed by the Artists Rifles.