LEIGHTON HOUSE 



now in a very different connection may^be pardoned every unit 

 in both designs is "doing its bit" is connected in some way 

 with the whole. Everything helps to tell the story a point 

 Leighton greatly insisted on. 



I well remember how, in a carefully worked-out design of mine 

 the subject of which was chosen by himself from " Plutarch's 

 Lives " and the history of Coriolanus my illustration of the 

 tragic moment when, exclaiming " Mother, you have saved 

 Rome, but lost your son ! " the hero yields to the prayer of his 

 mother, what he had refused to concede to his wife and others 

 pleased him extremely, except in one respect. In order to fill up 

 a corner otherwise empty, I had introduced a boy stretched on the 

 ground merely as an onlooker. The introduction was immediately 

 condemned ; the boy had no right to be there as he in no way 

 helped the elucidation of the story rather, he diverted attention 

 from the central group and the moving moment. And yet the 

 critic abhorred small empty spaces. " Your little mean spaces," 

 he used to call them. 



It was very characteristic of him that he could discern and 

 praise in others, qualities that we do not find in his own pictures. 

 For instance, he looked for feeling i.e., emotion in a student's 

 work, because he had remarked its presence there before and 

 finding it, he praised it. 'I have seen that in your work already." 

 And so I repeat what I said earlier, that because he divined un- 

 erringly in what direction a student's natural bent lay he was a 

 sympathizing and successful teacher ; and it was the same rare 

 gift of understanding and of insight the ability to take the point 

 of view of another, to appreciate and encourage the development 

 in others of qualities that some may miss in his own work that 

 helped to make his success as President. 



Feeling, in the sense of human emotion, does not exist in 

 Leighton's own pictures and it is a cause of wonderment to me 

 now as it was in the days when I was privileged to learn so much 

 from him that he seemed to value much in others qualities, that 

 he certainly did not strive after himself; but I think now, that 

 herein he showed his greatness, and his peculiar fitness for his 

 position. In this respect he was a great critic. 



Feeling, of course, using the word in its more limited aesthetic 

 sense that intangible something that may exist in one portion 



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