The Arts Club is founded by Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Frederic Leighton, and others in Hanover Square, London on June 12, 1863.

It remains today a meeting place for men and women involved in the creative arts either professionally or as patrons.

Leighton, born in Scarborough to Augusta Susan and Dr. Frederic Septimus Leighton, has two sisters including Alexandra, who is Robert Browning's biographer.

Educated at University College School, London, he then received his artistic training on the European continent, first from Eduard von Steinle and then from Giovanni Costa.

At age seventeen, in the summer of 1847, he met the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in Frankfurt and drew his portrait, in graphite and gouache on paper—the only known full-length study of Schopenhauer done from life.

When he was twenty-four he was in Florence; he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti, and painted the procession of the Cimabue Madonna through the Borgo Allegri.

From 1855 to 1859 he lived in Paris, where he met Ingres, Delacroix, Corot and Millet.

In 1860, he moved to London, where he associates with the Pre-Raphaelites.

He had designed Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tomb for Robert Browning in the English Cemetery, Florence in 1861.