LEIGHTON HOUSE 



Academy in those days as there is apt to be more or less, in the 

 atmosphere of every academic body that had a deadening effect. 

 Besides which, Holman-Hunt, Madox Brown, and Rossetti, remained 

 sternly outside Burne- Jones a sort of younger son of the Brother- 

 hoodthough elected an associate an honour, I believe, not of 

 his seeking only exhibited there once, and sent his best work 

 elsewhere. And after entering the Academy, Millais himself 

 who certainly possessed genius, and will live when most of us are 

 forgotten in sundry notable portraits, in " The Boyhood of 

 Raleigh," and other examples of his exuberant middle period 

 examples that are satisfying till compared with his youthful efforts 

 broke entirely away from Pre-Raphaelite principles. A certain 

 devolution from them was to be expected and for some years he 

 betrayed no decline in painting-power rather the reverse but 

 his work ceased to show the intensity of intellectual vision the 

 emotional and dramatic force, and the passionate admiration for, 

 and close loving study of, nature, of " The Huguenot " and similar 

 subjects, while it lacked the subtle meanings carried through 

 every inch of the canvas to be found in that noblest of British 

 pictures, " The Blind Girl," well worth a pilgrimage to Birmingham 

 to see ! 



These pictures, and others by the Brotherhood, though they 

 did not lead to a revolution in Art had effected what sincerity 

 and earnestness will more or less always effect in the most con- 

 servative society. Before Frederick Leighton appeared upon the 

 scene Pre-Raphaelitism had sent a revivifying breath of fresh 

 air through the closed and musty chambers of Burlington House 

 and had blown away the cobwebs of a century of conventional 

 art ; and though this had passed, and to some extent the dust had 

 settled again yet the windows were left open for the admission of 

 a healthy realism, and later, of a broad and sane impressionism 

 using the word for the moment in the narrow sense in which it is 

 usually applied. Both of these had originated in this country, 

 and only came back to us from France ; for if it be doubtful how 

 far our own Constable inspired the great French landscapists and 

 the French nature school none will deny that Turner was the 

 first great Impressionist. Mr. Charles J. Holmes, perhaps the 

 chief authority on Constable, thinks that his influence on French 

 Art has been exaggerated, and that the Impressionists when they 



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