ure.
This is a cardinal point, because in carrying out the picture the folds
are found fitting mathematically on to the nude, or nudes, first
established on the canvas. The next step then is to transfer these
draperies to the canvas on which the design has been squared off, and
this is done with flowing colour in the same monochrome as before over
the nudes, to which they are intelligently applied, and which nudes must
never--mentally at least--be lost sight of. The canvas has been prepared
with a grey tone, lighter or darker, according to the subject in hand,
and the effect to be produced. The background and accessories being now
added, the whole picture presents a more or less completed
aspect--resembling that, say, of a print of any warm tone. In the case
of draperies of very vigorous tone, a rich flat local colour is probably
rubbed over them, the modelling underneath being, though thin, so sharp
and definite as to assert itself through this wash. Certain portions of
the picture might probably be prepared with a wash or flat tinting of a
colour the _opposite_ of that which it is eventually to receive. A blue
sky, for instance, would possibly have a soft, ruddy tone spread over
the canvas--the sky, which is a very definite and important part of the
President's compositions, being as completely drawn in monochrome as any
other portion of the design; or for rich blue mountains a strong orange
wash or tint might be used as a bed. The structure of the picture being
thus absolutely complete, and the effect distinctly determined by a
sketch which it is the painter's aim to equal in the big work, he has
nothing to think of but colour, and with that he now proceeds
deliberately, but rapidly.

[Illustration: NUDE STUDY FOR "CAPTIVE ANDROMACHE"]

[Illustration: STUDY FOR A FIGURE IN "CAPTIVE ANDROMACHE"]

[Illustration: STUDY FOR "ANDROMACHE"]

"Such is the method by which Sir Frederic Leighton finds it convenient
to build up his pictures. The labour entailed by such a system as this
is, of course, enormous, more especially when the composition to be
worked out is of so complex a character as the _Captive Andromache_ of
last year, every figure and group of which were treated with the same
completeness and detail as we have seen to attend the production of so
simple a picture as _The Sibyl_. Deliberateness of workmanship and
calculation of effect, into which inspiration of the moment is never
allowed to enter, are t