Francis Grant on November 13, 1878. In that year the French Exhibition was held, and he was made President of the British section there, and received the Legion of Honour.
Sir Frederick Leighton, P.R.A.
From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry.
"The first statue I did," said Sir Frederick, "was that of an athlete wrestling with a python. The little sketch for this I merely did casually. It took but a short time to model, and there was no question of exhibiting it. But one or two friends saw the model, amongst them Legros, who remarked, 'Why not carry it out on a larger scale?' I laughed, thinking I should not able to manage it, but finally succeeded. It occupied a couple of years in completing, working on it occasionally. It was eventually bought under the Chantrey bequest, sent to Paris, and got a first-class gold medal and diploma. I also did the 'Sluggard' and 'Needless Alarm.'"
Seeing that Sir Frederick always declines to express himself on any great artistic subject in the haphazard way in which we were chatting together, I contented myself with asking him one or two questions on the very simple topics of canvases, colours, models and methods of working.
"I never give my whole attention to one picture at the same time," said Sir Frederick; "I invariably have six or seven canvases going, and I find it gives me all the rest I need to go from one to the other, working a little bit here and a little bit there. By this means the eye is constantly refreshed; I get through a good deal of work by this system. I have no special models, and there is no model who sits to me alone. Models are constantly ringing at my side door, anxious to become engaged, just as they do at the doors of other studios. The faces I paint are never the faces of my models; what the artist puts on the canvas is the impression which the model produces upon him—what he feels inwardly, and not what he sees before him. Yes, I am very devoted to drapery, and invariably use a certain kind of muslin for dresses. In a picture the colour of a garment is an invention on the part of the artist, and not a copy of the colour of any fabric. It is quite a mistake to imagine that we take a garment out of a cupboard and paint it; it is simply used for getting the form and folds; the colour is conceived. I consider that the colours used to-day, if properly prepared, ought to be far better and much more durable than those of the past. In the days of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Wilkie, during the reign of asphaltum, a colour used very largely then but now quite out of use, the pictures suffered very much. Although I have been painting in oils exactly fifty years, I have only had one single accident happen with a pigment."
Sir Frederick Leighton seldom paints portraits. He considers it "fetters one down, as you are simply bound to satisfy your subject." He cannot work under restraint, neither can he use his brush whilst being watched; he could not touch a canvas with his most intimate friend by his side looking on. He likes to work with a large palette, and by preference with one of lemon-coloured wood.
