t popular picture of the year. The last of the three was
_Actaea, the Nymph of the Shore_. It represents a small full-length nude
figure lying on white drapery by the sea-shore. Actaea is a lovely
figure, full of that grace which Leighton so well knew how to impart to
his idealized figures.

After this year, at any rate, there could be no longer any doubt but
that the artist's power really lay in the creation of ideal forms;
whether presented in monomime or combined in poetic and decorative
groups, called up from the wonderful limbo of classic myth and history.

With 1869 came _Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon_, a memorable picture,
full of characteristic effects of colour and composition, and a notable
exercise in the grand style. This work, considered from any side, must
be seen to be the outcome of a unique faculty, so unprecedented in
English art as to run every risk of misconception that native
predilections could impose upon those who stopped to criticise it. The
figure of Electra clad in black drapery offered a problem of peculiar
difficulty.

Another painting shown this year was _Daedalus and Icarus_, a strikingly
conceived picture. The two figures are singularly noble conceptions of
the idealized nude; the drapery at the back of Icarus is typical of the
painter in every fold, while the landscape seen far below the stone
platform on which the figures stand, shows a bay of the blue Aegean sea
in full sidelight, with a lovely glimpse of the white walls of a distant
town.

The same exhibition of 1869 saw, also, the vigorously painted diploma
picture, _St. Jerome_, which marked his election as R.A. In it the
saint, nude to the waist, kneels with uplifted arms at the foot of a
crucifix, his lion seen in the background. _Helios and Rhodos_,
another painting exhibited at the same time, shows Helios descending
from his chariot, which is in a cloud above, to embrace the nymph
Rhodos, who has risen from the sea.

[Illustration: DAEDALUS AND ICARUS (1869)]

[Illustration: ST. JEROME (1869)]

CHAPTER IV

YEAR BY YEAR--1870 TO 1878

Sundry journeys into the East during this period of Leighton's career,
gave him new subject-matter, new tints to his palette, and added
something of an oriental fantasy to the classic sentiment of his art.
The sketches of Damascus and other time-honoured eastern cities,
mosques, gardens, and courtyards, which figured largely among Sir
Frederic's studies, were made for the