LEIGHTON HOUSE 



I remember once watching this scene when, somewhere about 

 11.30 p.m., when nearly everybody had arrived a belated pair 

 a lady and gentleman, breathless and eager hurried up the car- 

 peted pathway between the flowers clear enough by this time- 

 to where the President still stood, now almost alone, and deserted 

 by the Council. " Oh, Sir Frederick," they panted, " we are so 

 sorry we're so late, but we've been all the way down to your house 

 at Kensington we thought the party was there ! ' 



I caught his reply : " But this is the Academy soiree ! " They 

 must have been strangers to London and its ways though they 

 evidently knew him well, and had probably made his acquain- 

 tance abroad and receiving the invitation card had mistaken 

 both the nature of the function, and the scene. 



Leighton's discourses, delivered to the students at the biennial 

 prize distribution of the Royal Academy, when the gold medals in 

 painting, sculpture, and architecture, and the travelling student- 

 ships, are awarded his speeches at the Academy banquets and on 

 similar occasions, were all marked by the same dignity, finish and 

 evidence of punctilious care, as were his pictures. Those pictures, 

 in the years of which I have been speaking, were outstanding 

 features of the annual exhibitions, and together with Millais' and 

 Alma-Tadema's, gave to them, if not a greater distinction, 

 certainly a greater general interest, than they have at the present 

 day notwithstanding the presence there now of much masterly 

 work, especially among the portraits. Yet even in his lifetime, 

 many people objected to the excessive smoothness and sometimes 

 " sugariness " of the President's style of painting ; and in his 

 larger decorative works, and more monumental and classical 

 subjects in spite of the magnificent drawing the impressiveness 

 is marred by a certain want of virility in execution. Yet, as Mr. 

 Pepys Cockerell has said, " Whatever judgment the future may 

 pass upon his own productions, the fact must never be lost sight 

 of that even without them, Leighton was a great man. Intellec- 

 tually, spiritually, and socially, he was the most brilliant leader 

 and a stimulator of artists we have ever seen in England." 



And this is true. To young artists the Academy students, 

 for whom he cared so much one of his great charms, lay in his 

 accessibility ; his helpful interest in any one of them, once exerted, 

 never flagged. I do not suppose he ever refused to receive any 



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