dd, was suggested to the painter by a
passage in the second Idyll of Theocritus: "And for her then many other
wild beasts were going in procession round about, and among them a
lioness." _The Painter's Honeymoon_ and a _Portrait of Mrs. James
Guthrie_ were also exhibited this year; and the wall-painting of _The
Wise and Foolish Virgins_, at Lyndhurst, in the New Forest, was executed
during the summer.

[Illustration: VENUS DISROBING FOR THE BATH (1867)]

[Illustration: ELECTRA AT THE TOMB OF AGAMEMNON (1869)]

In its next exhibition, that of 1867, the Academy held five pictures by
the artist, including the delightful _Pastoral_, two small
full-length figures standing in a landscape of a shepherd and a
girl--whom he is teaching to play the pipes. This again might be
considered a painter's translation from Theocritus, and the _Venus
Disrobing for the Bath_, one of the most debated of all the artist's
paintings of the nude. The paleness of the flesh-tint of this Venus
aroused a criticism which has often been urged against his
pictures--that such a hue was not in nature. In imparting an ideal
effect to an ideal subject, Leighton always, however, followed his own
conviction--that art has a law of its own, and a harmony of colour and
form, derived and selected no doubt from natural loveliness, but not to
be referred too closely to the natural, or to the average, in these
things.

To the 1868 Academy Leighton contributed another biblical theme,
_Jonathan's Token to David_. With this were four others, as widely
varying in subject and conception as need be desired. One was a very
charming portrait of a very pretty woman, _Mrs. Frederick P. Cockerell_.
Then follow three more in that cycle of classic subjects, of which the
painter never tired. The full title of the first runs, _Ariadne abandoned
by Theseus: Ariadne watches for his return: Artemis releases her by death_.
In it the figure of Ariadne, clothed in white drapery, is seen lying on a
rocky promontory overlooking the sea. _Acme and Septimius_ is a circular
picture, with two small full-length figures reclining on a marble bench.
This extract from Sir Theodore Martin's translation of Catullus was
appended to its title in the catalogue:

"Then bending gently back her head,
With that sweet mouth so rosy red,
Upon his eyes she dropped a kiss,
Intoxicating him with bliss."

A love song on canvas, a pictorial transcript from Catullus, it was
perhaps the mos