e bethought
him of a subject that would enable him to introduce his
_trouvaille_. As but one attitude could display the special
formation to advantage, the idea of a Sibyl, sitting brooding beside her
oracular tripod, was soon evolved, but not so soon was its form
determined and fixed. Like Mr. Watts, Sir Frederic Leighton thinks out
the whole picture before he puts brush to canvas, or chalk to paper;
but, unlike Mr. Watts, once he is decided upon his scheme of colour, the
arrangement of line, the disposition of the folds, down to the minutest
details, he seldom, if ever, alters a single line. And the reason is
evident. In Sir Frederic's pictures--which are, above all, decorations
in the real sense of the word--the design is a pattern in which every
line has its place and its proper relation to other lines, so that the
disturbing of one of them, outside of certain limits, would throw the
whole out of gear. Having thus determined his picture in his mind's eye,
he in the majority of cases makes a sketch in black and white chalk upon
brown paper to fix it. In the first sketch, the care with which the
folds have been broadly arranged will be evident, and, if it be compared
with the finished picture, the very slight degree in which the general
scheme has been departed from will convince the reader of the almost
scientific precision of the artist's line of action. But there is a good
reason for this determining of the draperies before the model is called
in; and it is this. The nude model, no matter how practised he or she
may be, never moves or stands or sits, in these degenerate days, with
exactly the same freedom as when draped; action or pose is always
different--not so much from a sense of mental constraint as from the
unusual liberty experienced by the limbs, to which the muscular action
invariably responds when the body is released from the discipline and
confinement of clothing.

"The picture having been thus determined, the model is called in, and is
posed as nearly as possible in the attitude desired. As nearly as
possible I say, for, as no two faces are exactly alike, no two models
ever entirely resemble one another in body or muscular action, and
cannot, therefore, pose in such a manner as exactly to correspond with
either another model or another figure--no matter how correctly the
latter may be drawn. From the model the artist makes the careful
outline, in brown paper, a true transcript from life, which may enta