LEIGHTON HOUSE 



That Millais felt the disabilities under which the women in my time 

 laboured to be very unjust, I am sure, for he did what he could to 

 mitigate the injustice. I well remember an occasion immediately 

 following on my admission to the Upper Painting School, when he 

 was the " Visitor " for the month and that the model he provided 

 was a beautiful little boy of some eight or nine years old graceful, 

 lithe, and nearly nude. The innovation was chiefly for the benefit 

 of the women students in the class. 



The pose was a kneeling one, and the child moved a good deal, and I 

 recall how on this my first attempt at painting the figure from the 

 life wrestling with the difficulties of flesh-painting in oil, and keep- 

 ing the drawing correct at the same time I made the boy's curly 

 head rather too large. When the great master came round to me, 

 he detected this at once, saying sympathetically : "I know, it's just 

 like having a tooth out, but it must come out," and out it came ! 



Millais was a wonderful personality ; he had a handsome presence, 

 a genial, breezy, almost jovial manner, and a kindly smile ; and he 

 had a humorous way of putting things, with a touch of fun which 

 was very effective. 



I never knew him very well, not nearly so well as in the same 

 relation that of master and pupil I came, soon after, to know 

 Leighton ; but he never forgot anyone, or one's work ; he would 

 come out of his way to speak of it of that I might give instances 

 pleasant to look back upon, but they would be out of place here 



In the light of that early remark of Thackeray's, before quoted : 

 " Millais, my boy, I met in Rome a versatile young dog called 

 Leighton, who will one day run you hard for the Presidency " 

 it is curious to remember how some twenty-five years ago, Millais 

 and Leighton (like Reynolds and Romney had done before them) 

 " divided " the suffrages of the town. I think now no one will 

 hesitate to say that Millais was far and away the greater painter, 

 though, as I said before, he was not a greater all-round artist. 

 But it seems to me that while Millais had more than a touch of 

 native genius, Leighton had greater accomplishment. However, 

 to enlarge upon this would only be to repeat in extenso what I 

 briefly said at the beginning of the chapter, touching the great 

 President's versatility we are still too near them both in point of 

 time to judge either fairly ; at present both have suffered that 

 partial and temporary eclipse which I have elsewhere remarked as 



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