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 blasé 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 zsthetics 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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