GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



and girls alike literally worshipped him, and he deserved our 

 appreciation, for nobody ever made greater efforts to inspire and 

 stimulate. It is certain that he contrived to infuse into those 

 with whom he came in contact, his own enthusiasm for work. 

 Himself an early riser in his studio I have understood before 

 eight o'clock when Visitor at the Schools he had insisted that 

 the Painting- school should be opened, and the models posed, at 

 nine, the usual hour being ten o'clock. And he would often come 

 down, booted and spurred, to go round the classes, when on his 

 way to the headquarters of the Artists' corps, of which he was 

 colonel. How little did its first commander guess that the now 

 famous " Artists " would one day share with the " Inns of Court " 

 " The Devil's Own " the distinction of training most of the 

 young officers in our new armies who, in the greatest war in history, 

 have so valiantly fought and bled on the Continent, in the cause 

 of their country, and the world's freedom. But Leighton's interests 

 in the students did not cease when he passed out of the schools. 

 In order to encourage the study of composition he set subjects 

 invariably classical or historical and invited, from the Upper 

 schools, all who would take the trouble to work them out to 

 bring their designs on a certain day, to his own beautiful studio 

 in Kensington. So far as I remember, though many went on the 

 first occasion, the students dropped off by degrees his proviso 

 that he would not waste time in criticizing rough sketches 

 possibly not pleasing them but I think it was in this way that 

 I acquired the habit of seeking his advice in the designs for my 

 early pictures and of taking to him, for criticism, the scheme 

 of the work I proposed to do. Composition, of course, cannot 

 really be taught ; the sense of arrangement, relative value of parts, 

 line, balance, and so forth, must be more or less intuitive ; and no 

 one who is entirely devoid of the instinct will ever be an artist ; 

 but the natural sense being there, even in a small degree, it can be 

 cultivated. That the great President was a past-master in the 

 difficult art of grouping many figures, of arranging them naturally 

 into a homogeneous whole his noble decorative lunettes at 

 South Kensington" The Arts of Peace " and " The Arts of War," 

 far more than large ambitious canvases such as " Daphnephoria " 

 suffice to show. In these, every part is busy not restless, not 

 obtrusive but if the application of a popular phrase much used 



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