ILLUSTRATED BIOGRAPHIES OF F.-G. DUMAS In*ova\e PARIS LI BRA I R I E D’ ART. LUDOVIC BASCHET 25, BOULEVARD SAINT-GERMAIN, I 25 SIR FREDERICK LEIGHTON, P.R.A. CUPID. (Drawn by Ch. Waltner.) ifteen years ago, sitting one May morning with Mr. Watts at Little Holland House, questioning him about Mr. Leighton’s Orpheus and Eurydice — then on the walls of the Royal Academy — and learning much from him as to the points of special achieve- ment, learning in fact where lay the just cause of my own interest and admiration, he suddenly broke off in the very midst of an explanation of the nobility of the aims indicated by the work, and of the strength and weakness proper to a nature which strove after perfection. He broke off from these considerations with, “ But you do not know Leighton. If you knew Leighton, you would know that his life is more noble than anything in his work. ” If I now venture to repeat these words, it is only to indicate how very imperfect a notice such as this must be, for it must necessarily leave untold all that bears on the life of the man, — all those facts which might shew us the truth of Mr. Watts’ words concerning his friend. From these pages must be omitted even that which a worthy curiosity might desire to hear. For it is indeed impossible that one should be greatly attracted by that which a man does, without wishing to know something of what he is; and yet what he is can only be fully revealed to those who are brought 4 SIR FREDERICK LEIGHTON, P.R.A. into close contact with him in his daily life, under the protection of the sacred confidence of intimate ties of blood or friendship. The history of the artist, not of the man, that alone may to-day be written; and this brief outline of the facts which everyone may know, will have at least the value of accuracy as perfect as can be insured by some slight personal knowledge in recent years of Sir Frederick himself, and by the valuable help of those who have witnessed the whole course of his life. His immediate ancestors were established in Yorkshire, but they came, there is reason to believe, from Shropshire. In Yorkshire, at Scarborough, on the 3rd December, 1830, Sir Frederick was born. His family was not, however, permanently settled in England ; his grandfather, the late Sir James Leighton, was for many years the much valued physician of the late Empress of Russia, and also chief of the Medical Department of the Imperial Navy, of which he had the sole direction, together with the patronage of all the offices connected with it. Sir Frederick's father was also a physician, but relinquished his profession at a compara- tively early age, in consequence of the delicate state of his wife’s health, which induced him to move from place to place on the Continent, in the hope of finding some suitable climate. In 1839 family came to Paris; and in the same year, Sir Frederick, then a little boy of nine, saw for the first time an artist’s studio — that of George Lance, Haydon’s well-known pupil. Lance encouraged the little lad's desire to be an artist; but this desire, it should be remembered, was not awakened by the visit to Lance's studio ; it seems to have dated back to the very beginning of consciousness, and to have grown and strengthened daily, without prompting from without. For, during the same eventful year, when a fever had seized upon the child, in the course of which his life was almost despaired of, the dream of its future consecration to art had become a settled purpose, of which the pages of his little sketchbook give plain evidence. The dissuasions of those about him failed to shake his resolution, and on the arrival of the family in Rome (1840-41), Sir Frederick received his first lessons from Signor Meli, making, as indeed early drawings — still preserved — bear witness, astonishingly rapid progress. But the hours devoted to these special studies were only those which could be well spared from the time claimed bv that careful general training, and education, which his father had at heart. Mr. Leighton was himself a scholar, and whilst insisting on the mastery of the dead languages, was deeply sensible of the value of the living; he was well seconded by the natural aptitude and readiness of his son, who, whilst yet a child, read French with the same ease as English. Italian also he acquired with even greater facility. One evening in the spring of 1879, when the talk in a Milanese drawing-room turned on the newly elected President of the English Royal Academy, two Italians who were present — to whom Sir Frederick was personally unknown — told how a banquet had been recently given by the artists and amateurs of Milan, to Tullo Massa- rani the well-known author and critic, to which Sir Frederick also had been invited, when it became known that he was in the town. Massarani, the hero of the feast, delivered an eloquent speech, as was of him expected; a speech for the preparation of which he had had ample leisure ; but Sir Frederick was also called upon with little or no notice, little or no time to think over or put into shape that which he had to say : his speech was, however, described by these perfectly impartial hearers, as the success of the evening; as more eloquent, more Italian, than that of Massarani himself; spoken, too, with the most perfect accent and manner, full of little turns and delicacies which it seemed impossible that a foreigner should have acquired, and showing complete mastery of a tongue it is specially difficult to speak with perfect accuracy and style. Mr. Leighton left Rome with his family in the summer of 1842, stopping first at Dresden; the Gal- lery there was visited, and then Berlin was selected as a halting-place for the winter. During those six months spent in Berlin, his son perfected his command of German — a tongue of which he possessed some knowledge before leaving Italy — and attended the classes of the Berlin Academy. In the following year, Mr. Leighton went south to Munich, and then to Frankfort, where his son went regularly to school. It was not until 1844-5 that the family returned to Italy, and settled for a time at Florence. Here, Mr. Leighton submitted his son’s drawings to the well-known American sculptor, Hiram Power, with the earnest request for his unbiassed and candid opinion as to their merit. For Mr. Leighton was naturally unwilling to sanction his son’s choice of Art as a profession, unless he could himself be assured that that choice was justified by nothing less than the certain hope of future excellence and eminence. At Mr. Power’s desire, the drawings were left with him for a week; and when Mr. Leighton called at the expiration of that time to hear the verdict on which so much seemed to depend, he was met with, “Sir, your son may be as eminent as he pleases; as a rule, SIR FREDERICK LEIGHTON, P. R. A. 5 I discourage young lads from becoming artists, but in this case I cannot.” And when Mr. Leighton pressed for the positive assurance that Mr. Power’s advice was that he should make of his son an artist, the reply was, ‘‘That, Sir, it is out of your power to do, Nature has done it for you.” It was in consequence of this decisive opinion that Mr. Leighton now yielded to his son's wish in the choice of a profession ; he yielded, but on condition that his general education should be in no wise sacrificed. ~ Sir Frederick was now attending the school of the Acca- cicmia dclle Belle Arti under Bezzuoli and Segnolini, he was following a course of anatomy at the Hospital under Zanetti, and he also began to paint in oil : — his first attempt, a portrait of himself, has been fortunately pre- served; for it shews, in the plainest way, promise of exactly those qualities which now mark his work — but other studies were not neglected. The year 1845-6 was again spent at Frankfort, at school ; and it was not until he had nearly attained the age of seventeen, that his father permitted him to devote the greater part of his time to special preparation for his chosen work. He was placed, as a pupil of Professor Becker, in the Stadelsches Institut ; and was thus directly subjected to the peculiar influences of the modern German art revival; but his sympathies seem to have been attracted rather by the school of Diisseldorf, than by its Munich rival, for the work he then most admired in the gallery of the Institute, was Lessing's Huss before the Council of Constance. In 1848 came a stay in Brussels, where the acquaintance of Wiertz and Gallait was made; and, during the course of the winter, Sir Frederick produced a picture, — Cimabue finding Giotto: which, when afterwards exhibited in Frankfort, was much liked, the colour being held to be one of its chief merits : a second work, Othello and Desdemona, was also executed in the same year, but before returning to Frankfort he remained for some time in Paris (1849), occupied with copying in the Louvre, chiefly from the works of Titian and Correggio, and working in the life-school of the Rue Richer. During his absence in Brussels and Paris, Sir Frederick had worked without a master; but on coming back to Frankfort he selected Steinle as his guide. The teaching he had received at Florence, whilst only in his fifteenth year, had given a direction to his work which bid fair to become an evil mannerism. Steinle seems, with admirable judgment and taste, to have set himself steadily to combat this bias, and, by his wise advice and able teaching, deeply influenced his pupil. Until lie felt sure that he was strong enough to resist the influences which had previously mastered him, Steinle firmly opposed Sir Frederick’s eager wish to return to Italy ; and with the exception of a visit to England, to the International Exhibition of ! 85 1 , — on which occasion he made the acquaintance of Ward, and Frith and Goodall — Sir Frederick remained at Frankfort, from 1850 up to x 852-3, when he left Germany and settled in Rome. At some time during the three years spent at Frankfort, must be placed a short stay in Darmstadt, where Sir Frederick, on the occasion of an artist’s festival, executed, in conjunction with Signor Gamba, a humorous fresco on the walls of an old castle near the town, which still remains, and has recently been protected from the weather by the care of the present Grand Duke. Amongst the more important work executed at this period must be counted Tybalt and Romeo, and the Death of Brunelleschi; two paintings, the second of which has remained in the possession of Sir Fredenck s old master Steinle. In his own hands, also, Sir Frederick still retains a very remarkable coloured cartoon, 6 SIR FREDERICK LEIGHTON, P.R.A. which belongs to the same date. It is an illustration of Boccaccio’s ghastly story of the Pest in Florence. In the centre, a woman escapes bearing her child at her breast; as she leaves the gates her progress is checked by the appearance of the terrible cart, which, drawn up on her left, receives the corpses heaped upon it by the ruffianly bearers of the dead; on her right a gay company of gallants feast in drunken merriment. One of the band, suddenly stricken, falls headlong from his seat; but the revels only gather fresh spirit, as the living drink “Bon voyage” to the dead. The comparison of this drawing noth another of an earlier period — also an illustration of Boccaccio, — which represents Bruno Buffalmacco and Calandrino, going round the corner to the Osteria, having first dressed up a dummy, to make the watchful nuns believe that Buffalmacco is still at work, — shows the nature of the change Steinle’s teaching was now beginning to work. In both the drawings, the treatment of the drapery has evidently attracted much of the interest of the artist ; but the drapery of the figures in the Pest, has a character which is wanting to the nuns’ robes of the earlier study, — a character due not only to the growing sense of its power of expressing the forms which lie beneath it, but to the awakened perception of its constructive value in com- position. This point is especially noticeable in the arrangement of the dress of the woman who bears her child from the accursed city; and the movement and expression, also, of all the actors in this drama, seem to show an observation of life, which contrasts with the conventional air and gestures of Buffalmacco and his friend. In one respect, however, these two drawings not only resemble each other, but share a characteristic common to all Sir Frederick's work ; a characteristic as plainly evident in his boyish efforts at Rome and Florence, as in the matured work of recent years. Even in the quaint portrait of himself, at the age of fifteen, the point chiefly noticeable is the promise given of fine quality of line ; — the way in which the transition from one passage to another takes place without unnecessary emphasis, and that continuity of outline is preserved, which is one of the attributes of all noble work. This appears to be the more remarkable, when we find that even before attending the hospital at Florence, Sir Frederick, under the direction of his father, deeply studied anatomy; he read, and examined, and drew, — working at each parti- cular bone and muscle, until he could put it on paper correctly from memory. At Frankfort he had again resumed the pursuit of this special branch of know- ledge, proficiency in which has often led artists, less equally endowed, into cutting up their general line by harsh and abrupt indications of the actual shape of underlying forms; losing thereby that impression of strength and beauty which can only be conveyed by the tranquil sweep of unbroken curves. At last, Steinle saw that his pupil could be safely trusted to return to Italy, and consented to his departure for Rome. Wonderfully receptive bv nature, Sir Frederick has always assimilated whatever there might be for him to learn from those with whom he was brought into contact, even from men inferior in power to himself. Technically, at a later period, he learnt much from the veteran Robert Fleury, but Steinle’s influence at this critical moment of development left an indelible impression. His advice seems, always, to have been prompted by a generous and unselfish nature, and inspired by a perfect understanding of the character of the talent he was called upon to direct. Since there was no instant need that Sir Frederick should make money by bis profession, Steinle wisely insisted that he should perfect himself by every means in his power, before tempting the chances of the Exhibition room, and that competition of the market which does so much to vulgarise the immature. In this way it came to pass that Sir Frederick had reached the age of five-and-twenty when, in 1855, his name appeared for the first time in the catalogue of the Royal Academy. The picture which he then contributed — Cimabuc s Madonna carried in Procession through the streets of SIR FREDERICK LEIGHTON, P.R.A. 7 Florence (Buckingham Palace) — was the chief work of the years passed in Rome, during which was also produced, The Reconciliation of the Montagues and Capulets over the Bodies of the Lovers (now in America). At Rome he received the kindly notice of Gibson, and of Cornelius, — an alternative suggestion, for part of the Cirnabuc Procession , from the hand of Cornelius, is still in Sir Frederick's possession — and at Rome, too, began that great friendship with George Mason, which was ended only by Mason’s early and lamented death. Those to whom Sir Frederick was then well known, were impressed by the earnestness of his desire to be excellent in all things, THE WISE AND FOOLISH VIRGINS (Fresco in Lyndhurst Church). by the ready command he had of his own powers, by his proficiency in all exercises of the body, his musical taste and skill (inherited from his mother), and the dash and audacity of his brilliant and — as might be expected — flippant comments on manners and on men. It was hardly possible, indeed, that a man accompanied from his cradle by prophecies of his own future fame, already certain of outstripping his contemporaries in the race, and assured of social success by exactly that kind of person, of manners and of accomplishments which must attract popularity, should wholly conceal his happiness in the possession of these gifts and acquirements : it was hardly likely but that their possession should give a touch to the attitude both of mind and body which displeased those who were unaware of the justice of the pretensions which it indicated. That which is in truth remarkable, is, that even at this date, when in the full flush of youthful life and power, the one great object was not onlv not forgotten, but its claims were held pre- eminent. The ambition which had fired Sir Frede- rick’s childish hopes was not only for himself; dwelling always among a strange people, he had never forgotten his own country, and his own race. The English boy, drawing in the schools of Italy and Germany, heard daily denial of the claims of his own land; England had no artists and no school. Reynolds, Gainsborough, Wilson, Hogarth, Constable, Turner, and David Cox, were held to be chance exceptions; but this very denial urged him to more strenuous exertion, and deep- ened the resolve with which he determined, that if DANTE in exile. Nature had given him the genius, all strength and effort should be devoted to the task, not only of making himself a painter, but of aiding others to become so. And in this spirit , — which indeed has animated all his life — when the Cimabue Procession achieved its great success and was purchased by the Queen, a portion of the proceeds was devoted to the giving commissions to less fortunate fellow-workers in Rome. It seems also that this generous love of his own land was recognised as a motive to exertion by those who saw him in these student years. Old Professor Dahlinger had prophesied at Berlin, of the lad of thirteen, that he would one day become “ein bedeutender Kiinstler;” Cornelius now gave the same verdict in the shape he had divined to be most fitting, “ Sie konnen einmal,” he said, “ fur England etwas sehr bedeutendes werden. ’’ To become something of great importance for England no labour was too great, and friends who knew him well, speak of the unremitting pains with which the studies for the Cimabue picture were gone SIR FREDERICK LEIGHTON, P.R.A. through. In the course of 1853 the preliminary stages were worked out, in 1854 the painting was com- pleted, and at the Academy Exhibition of 1855 it achieved noted success. That year my father took me for the first time to the Academy, and I remember therefore with that peculiar distinctness which attaches to impressions received in childhood, the interest the work excited, and the special delight it gave to Mr. Ruskin ; — delight which he ex- pressed more freely in conversation, even, than in his written “ Notes. ” In the “ Notes ’’ Mr. Ruskin drew attention to the “ grace and sincerity ” by which the work was distinguished, , and to the nobility and beauty of the conception of the principal figures, — those of Giotto and Cimabue — but he did not notice, perhaps he did not attach as much importance to, that skill in composition and purity of line which my father specially bade me try and understand. In the “ Notes, ” too, Mr. Ruskin went on to complain, by im- plication, of want of delicacy of finish ; the handling, he also added, was much too broad. Here it will be therefore well to say that great delicacy of the eyes must from the first have deeply influenced Sir Frederick’s method of work and habits of life. For many years he had been forbidden to do any very fine work, or to draw, or paint, or read by artificial light on pain of losing his sight; but the reproach, of want of care, brought by Mr. Ruskin, was absolutely unfounded. There is no doubt, that then, as now, — short of losing eye- sight, — there is no sacrifice Sir Fre- derick would not readily make, no labour he would not willingly bestow, should it seem that the work in hand might be improved. In maturing a subject there are those to whom a stage comes, at which it stands complete and real in the mind : thenceforth the perfect vision commands every energy to its embodiment, and as long as any- thing is wanting to make its represen- tation adequate, it is a supreme point of honour with Sir Frederick, as with every true artist, not to withold the needed labour; not even if that labour seems likely to prejudice the result already obtained. The service which seems to him to be demanded by his own conception, is rendered even when those whose opinion he respects entreat him to stay his hand, even when it is almost certain that added finish will injure the chances of public success, or of sale, which last must necessarily be to anyone without great private means, a most important consideration. After the exhibition of the Cimabue Procession, Sir Frederick instead of ELECTRA AT THE TOMB OF AGAMEMNON. (Drawn by Ch. Waltner SIR FREDERICK LEIGHTON, P.R.A. 9 returning to Rome settled for some time in Paris in the Rue Pigalle. He had shared the impression made on every one, by the International Exhibition of 1855, at which the French school shewed proudly pre-eminent, and at Paris he was well received by many of its most distinguished men. Ricard, Auguste Mottez, Decamps, Robert-Fleury, Ary Scheffer, Ingres, — whom however he saw but once — were all friendly and encouraging. Ary Scheffer, to whom it was no small exertion, came to visit the young English painter. “Si je n’attachais pas quelque im- portance & votre talent,” he exclaimed, “ je ne monterais pas trois escaliers pour vous voir. ’’ Scheffer is gone, but the veteran Robert- Fleury still retains the pencil sketch made by Sir Frederick for his Feigned Death of Juliet; a picture executed in 1S57. The great work of those days, The Triumph of Music ; — still in the possession of the artist — was com- pleted in the spring of 1856, and was, that same year, exhibited in London. It was very ill re- ceived. Those who had most loudly proclaimed their pleasure in the Cimabue, now sought, as it were, to balance any want of measure in the admiration then expressed, by the assumption of an attitude of suspicious depreciation. They had been once surprised, and would now be on their guard against too favourable impressions. Now it is impossible to compare the Cimabue Procession with the works which followed it and not feel that a large element of caprice entered into the popular attitude, and if we analyse the printed opinions of Mr. Ruskin and other literary critics, we find that if the chorus of praise had been unintelligent, the chorus of blame was still more so. If the one had fastened on the points not specially excellent, the other selected for condemnation points not specially open to censure. Having known to the full the delightful stimulus of success, the painter of The Triumph of Music was now to taste all the vexation that an artist must reason- ably feel, who finds himself suddenly, he knows not why, out of sympathy with his audience. The praise had come but for a summer, the blame stayed through many seasons, and often even the position of Sir Frederick’s works in the Academy seemed to indicate that the . NAUSICAA. (Drawn by Ch. Waltner.) professional world was inclined to sympathize with lay opinion. The year immediately after this defeat (1857) Sir Frederick sent nothing to London, but he had not been idle. During that year, the greater part of which was spent in Paris, he produced — besides The Feigned Death of Juliet, already mentioned — The Fisherman and the Siren; Pan; — a picture the subject of which was taken from Keats ; Samson Agonistes (for which studies had been made in Algiers) ; and a Nymph and Cupid. Two of these works — The Death of Juliet, and The Fisherman and the Siren, — appeared on the walls of the 3 SIR FREDERICK LEIGHTON, P.R.A. Academy in the following summer, which Sir Frederick spent in London; where he was cordially received bv Millais, Rossetti, and Holman Hunt, and worked in a studio lent him by a friendly Academician — Mr. Elmore. The winter was passed at Rome, where he painted La Narnia, a study, which he contributed to the Exhibition of 1859. together with Sunny Hours, and Pamnia. The course of the summer found him at Capri, where many studies were made, amongst others, one exhibited at the Hogarth Club, — a pencil drawing of a grand lemon tree, of which not a leaf has been suffered to escape, nor even the little creeping snail on his shining path across the blooms. This drawing had to be done out of doors bv morning light, and to be completed in spite of all the baffling difficulties which attend the portrait of a tree in growth; and long before he had been brought into contact with popular “modern" ideas in painting, in the early Frankfort days, Sir Frederick had not only made studies out of doors, but had painted pictures with an out-of-door top light, with just the same realistic aims as characterize this study of a lemon tree, but always — as is also evident from the same drawing — seeking in the first place to learn from Nature those forms which she employs to give perfect expression to the generic truths of life. “ Lieber Leighton,” once said Cornelius, “ selbst die Natur hat Styl. A fact which perhaps anyone but a Ger- man would have stated differently, for to Nature only in her lavish outbursts of creation are known the deepest secrets of style. It is certainly impossible to see much of Sir Frederick GADITAX DANCER. , Leighton s work without becoming aware that he is penetrated with the conviction that the signs of style must be sought in life, that they cannot be successfully mimicked by compliance with any school recipe. Art is to him a living power which has work to do in the present : he knows that he who aspires to follow in the footsteps of the great masters — who reign, and must forever reign supreme — must live even as they did, in the life of his own day : he must strive, as far as in him lies, to do - not as he imagines he might have done, had he lived then, but as he may conceive they would have done had they lived now. The two landscapes, Capri (Sunrise)-, and Capri (Parana's); which appeared at the Exhibitions of i860 and 1861, both shewed, as plainly as other work, that in spite of that passionate enjoyment of colour, which led his Frankfort friends to pronounce him a colourist, his main pre-occupation was form and line. The very choice of site, in both these works — as in the many memoranda, and studies of landscape, more recently executed — shews ' V ’ a native and intense appreciation of fine constructive lines. With the second work — Capri (Pagano’s), — Sir Frederick exhibited, in 1861, four other paintings: Paolo and Francesca ; A Dream (a mystic picture painted for Mrs. Sandbach) ; S. O., a study ; — a very noble, fresh and charming portrait of his sister, Mrs. Sutherland Orr, which had the direct and dignified and per- fectly feminine charm of some of Gerard’s best studies of women ; and Licder ohne Wortc (J. Stewart Hodgson, Esq.) — a work which, as was noticed at the time, was hung high above the line, in a way conspicuously unworthy of its merits. In the following year Sir Frederick contributed six works : — Star of Bethlehem ; Sisters; Michael Angelo Nursing his Dying Servant ; Duct ; Sea Echoes ; and Odalisque. The last had a great popular success ; it was delicately engraved by Lumb Stocks, R. A., and reiterated applications came in to the painter for repetitions of the work. But to repeat a subject to order, to do again, and again, that which had been once done could not satisfy a man supremely ambitious in his art, supremely loyal to himself and to his own aims and aspirations. The year 1863 brought, not another Odalisque, but — Jezebel and Ahab met by Elijah the Tishbite; A Girl with a Basket of Fruit; An Italian Crossbowman ; and A Girl Feeding Peacocks. To the story of Orpheus, Sir Frederick returned a second time in 1864, the year in which he was elected an Associate of STUDY FOR THK DAPHNEPHORIA l'ac-similc of the original by Sir; Frederick I.eioiiton I'.R.A. SIR FREDERICK LEIGHTON, P.R.A. the Royal Academy, when he also gave us, Dante in Exile, and Golden Honrs (the late Mr. Benzon), a work which seems to have arrested public attention by a certain glow and beauty of colour, such as was noticed in the Lieder ohne Worte of 1861. The Girl Feeding Peacocks was an English subject, but the Girl with a Basket of Fruit, again showed the firm hold which the early study of classical literature had taken of the painter's imagination. Although the exigencies of his profession necessarily prevented the continuous application without which that thorough command of the language, which we call scholarship, is alone possible, Sir Frederick was deeply imbued with the true spirit of Greek story ; and gradually as he worked out of his early manner, which was not free from the influence of the Romantic movement, towards a greater simplicity, both in the conception and treatment of his subject, classic motives more and more frequently suggested themselves. The year 1865, which saw David; Mother and Child; Widow’s Prayer ; and In St. Mark's; saw also, Helen of Troy; and in 1866, together with Painter's Honeymoon; and, Mrs. fames Guthrie , Sir Frederick exhibited, Syracusan Brides leading Wild Beasts in Procession to the Temple of Diana; — a work which obtained for its author such a marked measure of success as had been unknown to him since the appearance of the Cimabue Procession. In the course of the same year (1866) Sir Frederick made a long tour in Spain, having some while previously crossed the frontier for a few days, when visiting the South of France, in order to study architecture, to which he has at different times devoted much attention. There is indeed some doubt as to the exact date of this second, longer, and more important stay, but it seems to be fixed pretty certainly, by the fact that in the list of Sir Frederick’s contributions to the Exhibition of 1867, appears : A Spanish Dancing Girl; Cadiz in the old limes. But the picturesque attractions of Spain did not disturb for a moment the steady current of the painter's aims. The Spanish Dancing Girl; and The Knuckle-bone Player ; had for companions, — A Roman Mother (Geo. Aitchison, Esq., A. R. A.) ; Venus Disrobing for the Bath (T. Eustace Smith, Esq., M. P.); and a Pastoral, — a sketch of which has been engraved in M. Charles Blanc's Artistes de mon temps. It was shortly after his return from Spain, about the end of September, 1866, that Sir Frederick removed from the rooms at No. 2, Orme Square — which he had occupied ever since he settled in England — to the house which had been built for him in Holland Park Road by his friend Mr. Aitchison, and which he still inhabits. In addition to his various contributions to the Academy and other Exhibitions he undertook at about this date the fresco of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, in the village church of Lyndhurst. Sir Frederick, who has been all his life long a great “ cuisinier, " perpetually making experiments of fresh methods and vehicles, here employed a medium composed of copal varnish mixed with oil of lavender, wax, and resin, which had already been successfully used by Mr. Gambier Parry in the decoration of the ceiling of the nave of Ely Cathedral. The composition, which has become well known by photographs taken on the 12 SIR FREDERICK LEIGHTON, P.R.A. spot, is disposed with grave symmetry ; the figure of Christ occupies the centre, on the right are the Wise, on the left hand the Foolish, Virgins ; the disposition of the figures against the architectural background shews throughout that thorough respect for the wall, which is an indispensable condition of all successful mural decoration : the admirably constructive character of the draperies is especially worthy of remark, and the manner in which this important work was carried out illustrates the extraordinary readiness with which the painter always has his full powers at command. It is well known that many of his works, such as portraits, have been executed in odd hours and half-hours, but the Lyndhurst fresco affords an even more marvellous instance of this rare faculty, for it was executed almost wholly on Saturday afternoons, when leaving town by the midday train. Sir Frederick drove to the church and then worked till dusk. Before the fresco was completed, Sir Frederick was able to put into execution a project which he had long desired to carry out, and to visit Greece. By way of Vienna, the Danube, Varna, Constan- tinople, Broussa, Smyrna, and Rhodes, he arrived at Athens, and the magnificent remains of her architecture made on him an impression deeply felt and never to be rivalled. The scenery, too, of the Greek islands and the shores of the -