ur.
Still more famous is _Wedded_,--"one of the happiest of Sir Frederic's
designs," said a critic at the time, "and as a composition of lines,
difficult, subtle, and original, may be called one of the most
remarkable productions of this decade." Other pictures shown this year
were _Antigone_ and the much-debated _Phryne at Eleusis_--a notable
study of the famous hetaira, who is seen standing, and holding out with
one hand the mass of her deep auburn hair. Her skin is of a ruddy golden
hue, as if seen under a glow of sunlight. Red tissue, which falls from
her shoulders and extended arms, and an olive-coloured mantle that has
fallen at the foot of the marble columns behind her, backed by a sky,
very characteristic of the painter, in which snowlike masses of cloud
float in a southern azure, produce a total effect of a certain
super-womanly order of beauty. A _Design for a portion of a Proposed
Decoration in St. Paul's_, a picture entitled _Melittion_, and a
_Portrait of Mrs. Mocatta_, were also hung at the Academy in 1882;
_Zeyra_, a little Eastern child in plum coloured headdress, a rich bit
of colour elaborately painted, was shown at the Grosvenor Gallery.

In 1883, _Memories_, though not one of the most typical of Leighton's
pictures, decidedly pleased the general public. It shows the half-length
figure of a blonde, in a black and gold dress. More interesting
artistically was a decorative frieze, _The Dance_, for a drawing-room,
the design for which we reproduce, and which may, in so far, answer for
itself. Other pictures of 1883 are _Kittens_, a full-length figure of a
fair-haired child in purple and embroidered drapery, seated on a bench
covered with a leopard skin, holding a rose in hand and looking down at
a kitten sitting beside her; and the _Vestal_, a bust of a girl with her
head and shoulders swathed with white gold-embroidered draperies. To
this year also belongs a _Portrait of Miss Nina Joachim_, a child in a
blue frock with crimson sash.

[Illustration: _Cymon and Iphigenia._
_By permission of the Fine Art Society._
_F. Leighton. pinxt._
_Swan Electric Engraving Co. Sc._]

[Illustration: STUDIES FOR TWO FRIEZES "MUSIC" AND "THE DANCE"]

The next year, 1884, brought _Letty_, that most delightful of English
maidens, _A Nap_, _Sun Gleams_, and the imaginative and admirably
romantic _Cymon and Iphigenia_. _Letty_ was one of Leighton's pictures
which particu