LEIGHTON HOUSE 



symptoms of extravagance and wilful eccentricity in British Art 

 showed themselves only four years before his death, and he was 

 out of England that autumn. The occasion was a violent con- 

 troversy that had arisen in Liverpool over the merits and demerits 

 of a small picture entitled " Summer," by Mr. Homel of the New 

 Glasgow group of painters. 



I was then resident in Liverpool, and naturally was drawn into the 

 discussion. A paper of mine on the subject, read at the Liverpool Art 

 Club, was printed by the members and published. It drew forth some 

 interesting replies from Millais, Watts, Holman-Hunt, and many 

 other leading artists, also from some well-known writers on art. 



The most amusing of these letters came from Mr. Philip Cal- 

 deron : " No," he wrote to me ; " the echoes of the great storm 

 have not reached so far, we are too far from the teapot ; and to 

 tell the truth we in London are quite blase about tremendous 

 revolutions in Art, we have had them so very often, we have passed 

 through Realists, Impressionists, then Vibrists, then Square- 

 brushists, then Smudgists, let alone the school (save the mark) 

 that used no palette, but a marble-topped dining- table instead." 

 It was indeed true that the stir caused by the Glasgow pictures 

 was local and evanescent ; and Sir Frederick Leighton wrote that 

 having been abroad all autumn, he had " heard nothing of the 

 war in Liverpool, until a rumour reached me the other day, I 

 forget how." Thus he never saw them, which is to be regretted, 

 since they were premonitory of much that has happened in the 

 world of aesthetics since his death ; but I think that even if Post 

 Impressionism and Futurism had appeared in his time, so great 

 was his social influence, and the prestige of his name, that the 

 Grafton Galleries would not have been thronged by fashion as 

 they were in certain years before the war, when the Post Im- 

 pressionist pictures were the talk of the town ; nor would Futur- 

 ism have fared any better, for whatever philosophic basis its 

 supporters may claim for it, its philosophy is not that of art, wherein 

 abstract ideas must of necessity have concrete expression. 



The President, I take it, would have simply ignored the move- 

 ment as in no way demanding his serious consideration, or the 

 interposition of his authority. 



Returning for a moment to the subject of the Academy Schools 

 in which Leighton was interested, the students, in my day men 



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