In a bay-window, where the light in softened splendor falls upon these recent works, may be found illustrations of the secret of the master's genius, which in his case, as in that of so many other geniuses, is the capacity for taking infinite pains. Here is a small group in terra cotta, designed and modelled by the artist for his well-known picture the "Daphnephoria." It is a common practice for this artist to model in clay the figures he puts into his works, and the little group under notice might be antique, the figures are so perfect in detail and so entirely classic in outline and pose. Close by stands a small model of his "Python-slayer." On the wall between the window and the easels is a book-case, chiefly devoted to the works of Goethe in their original language, and to the poets of other lands besides that which gave birth to Shakspeare. Turn your back on the well-filled case if you can, and notice the rich rugs that lie here and there, excellent keys for color, the tables crowded with books and sketches, the portfolios with studies of the figure, nude and draped, the cozy fire at the other end of the room-on one side of the crackling wall's-end a fluffy-looking deep-seated easy-chair, on the other a couch of equal capacity for rest. Further on you notice a screen that partially shuts out a recess, a sort of fanciful alcove, where the artist's tools are kept. The half-domed ceiling is decorated in gold which is rich in many hues of a dead-bronze-like harmony. Sir Frederick is for the nonce at work in his smaller studio, while we await him in the greater one. Presently there enters an officer of the famous corps of volunteer rifles of which the master is commander. There had been a parade on the previous day. Some important question of military administration in connection with the corps has arisen. Sir Frederick enters. His manner at once confirms all that his friends say in regard to his cordiality. The President of the Academy is a courtier by nature, but he carries his dignity with an easy frankness, and he is too many-sided, too sincere a student, too well-travelled, for any charge of narrowness to hold against him. It is a great thing for art in these days that not only English but universal art is represented by a master who rivals the great ones of the past in the selection of his subjects, in his treatment of them, and in his noble idealization of the profession which he adorns. If modern painters in England took pupils as their contemporaries of the Continent do, Leighton would found a school, a classic rival of Italy; and Millais would be the prophet of the English school, which would count in the foremost ranks such painters as Pettie, Nicol, Orchardson, Fildes, Haynes, Williams, Boughton, Yeames, Long, Marks, Herkomer, and others, who recognize the English idea of stories on canvas, some of whom are especially impressed with the view that it is for them to lay hold on the incidents of our own time, the pictures that lie around them, so that in the future men may look back upon these days through the medium of painted as well as written history. Seeing him in his academical robes and badge of office, in evening dress, in his military uniform, receiving the guests of the Academy, delivering a post-prandial oration or an address to students, or on parade in Hyde Park, you might come to regard Sir Frederick Leighton as a formalist and disciplinarian. He is very much in earnest about all he does. A courtier, you might think him the embodiment of form and ceremony; an orator, you might fancy he spent his life in thinking out striking similes and rounding sentences; a soldier, you would credit him with “a soul in arms," if not "eager for the fray"; and similarly in his own house you find him the friendliest and heartiest of hosts. He comes upon his guests in the cheeriest way, pleasant, open-handed, eager to make them at home. A little above the medium height, he is gray-headed, and his short beard and mustache are frosted with a silvery hue that adds dignity to the mobile and handsome features. His first duty is military, and it is worth while to notice how thoroughly he flings himself into the business which his subordinate has come to discuss. For the moment there is for him only one question in life; that is the particular subject which is before him in regard to a certain detail of management in connection with the volunteer company of which he is the head. Sitting upon couch by the fire, he is for some minutes as intent upon his brother officer's story as if honor, fortune, life, depended upon it; and when the point is settled he is just as earnest, of course in a lesser degree, in his pleasant attentions to us, listening to remarks upon art with the deference of one who ignores his own individuality, and offering his own views with a modest the deference, but none the less satisfied that he knows exactly what he is talking about. His manner is sympathetic, open, frank, unreserved, and it is easy to see that he takes a lively pleasure in his house, and that his mind is large enough to take in the eclecticism of Greek art, the devotionalism of the Mediæval, and the warmth of Orientalism. If the great workers of the past and the noble results of their art have for him a charm beyond everything in the present, there is no evidence in his labors of a blind worship of old masters, but there is every evidence of a desire to understand what was good and great in their methods, and to profit by it. It is a generous grip of the hand that emphasizes "good-by" as we pass into the smaller studio, and descending the stairs once more, as we notice its handsome columns we see that the seat mentioned at the outset is part of a recessed divan, and presently find ourselves in the Arab Hall, which is a dream of Oriental splendors dreamed in Kensington. The plan of the place is copied from La Ziza, at Palermo, and you need not go to Cairo, or any where else on the Nile or on the Bosporus, to get infused" with the best influence of Eastern art in decoration so long as the President of the Academy will permit you to study Orientalism in his Arab Hall, soothed by the musical plash of its fountain, and cheered by the gayety of its colored glass and splendid tiles. Sir Frederick has a rare sense of the fitness of things. His dining-room is quiet and unpretentious too dark, some think-in its decorations. "Froist" is inscribed on the lintel. The floor and walls are painted a dull red. The ornaments are chiefly Persian china and Venetian glass. In the library adjoining there are a grand picture of a doge of Venice, some studies by Ingres, drawings of Canova's "Venus," etchings by Legros, and drawings by Prinsep, Watts, and Alfred Stevens; and the excellent plan of having a fire-place beneath a window is adopted with good effect. The draw ing-room, which, like the apartments just mentioned, is entered from the groundfloor (the doors giving upon the inner hall previously mentioned), is a cheerful-cashire lad went to the first art school that looking apartment. This strikes one particularly in contrast with the dining-room. It has, however, a certain air of formality, perhaps; or is it the knowledge that the owner is a bachelor which suggests a something lacking? There are no flowers, no suggestions of embroidery in process, nor any other indications of a woman's presence. With the exception of what an actor would call a “property" lyre or guitar, there is not a musical instrument in the house. All the melodies and harmonies of the place are in the colors of its dec- | orations and in its art treasures. A room which boasts of pictures by Constable, David Cox, and Corôt may do well without flowers or pianos, and more especially when one can contemplate from its baywindow a lovely English lawn of velvetlike grass shut in from the rude world" by a belt of old English trees, through which are seen the red coats of that group of artists' houses, the soldiers or clansmen that are rallying to the support of their chief-a -a simile for which I find Mrs. Caddy, the author of Lares and Penates, must be credited. Hall, we are in Melbury Road, and facing us is one of the most typical houses of this artists' quarter. There is nothing more grateful to the eye in these modern days than the red brick buildings which are dotting the town in all directions, springing up in all parts of the great city. Mr. Norman Shaw has designed and erected most of the houses of that red company behind Sir Frederick's palace, of which, as we enter Melbury Road, the abode of Mr. Luke Fildes, A.R. A., stands to the front, as if in command, though the colony domiciles such distinguished and successful men as Mr. Orchardson, Mr. Collin Hunter, Mr. Marks, Mr. Burger, and others. Fildes is, in the broadest sense of the term, a representative artist of the day, a typical product of those very schools of art I have mentioned. Educated and created as a painter since South Kensington raised its first easel and sent out its first missionary, Fildes was a boy in Lancashire when a section of the London press was ridiculing the pretensions of South Kensington. It is the lot of all great reformers to be laughed at and contemned at the outset. The aspiring Lan Turning out of the narrow way that leads to the famous house of the Arab was opened in his neighborhood. Having graduated in design, he had soon outlearned the teacher, and he travelled further afield to a more ambitious school in a larger town. In a few years he fought his way to London, and passed the portals of the Academy schools, earning his living meanwhile by drawing on the wood for various publications. He found the careful work required by the engravers a help to his severer studies at the Academy, and both advanced together. By the time he had achieved the upper life school he had made a reputation as a draughtsman on wood. In the early days of Once a Week, which commanded the best artistic talent in London, having on its staff Millais, Gilbert, Birket Foster, and Tenniel, Luke Fildes held a prominent place; and when Bradbury and Evans were casting about for an artist to illustrate Victor Hugo's L'Homme Qui Rit, I had the satisfaction to suggest the clever young Once a Week draughtsman, and the further satisfaction of having to convey to him the expression of Victor Hugo's compliments on his graceful and striking interpretations of the great fictionist's characters and scenes. There are now lying before me proofs of the artist's first drawings of the mutilated. ness. hero, evidences of his obstinate earnestIt was contended on my side that Gwinplane's face should never be shown in the illustrations. This opinion, I remember, was enforced with many and weighty arguments; but Fildes, as a conscientious interpreter of the story, and with a sense of the realistic strong within him, contested the necessity of endeavoring to realize the terrible face, and thus enforcing it as the grim factor Hugo made of it in his strange romance. He had his way, and under the circumstances the compliments of the illustrious French author were of special weight. Later on in his career he was selected by the master of English fiction, Dickens, to illustrate his last story, Edwin Drood, the author being induced to invite his collaboration through the strong impression of power which he found in a Graphic picture by Fildes, the origin of the greater work which afterward took the town by storm, "The Casual Ward." Fildes is well known in America, not only on account of the exhibition of this work at Philadelphia, but for the Edwin Drood drawings. "The Empty Chair at Gadshill," and his "Betty," which is a popular engraving in the United States. It is an open, honest, earnest face that turns toward me with a pleasant smile as I enter the spacious studio of the successful young Associate. Lancashire born |