ntwerp (1885); Hon. D.C.L., Oxford, 1879; Hon. LL.D.,
Cambridge, 1879; Hon. LL.D., Edinburgh, 1884; Hon. D.Lit., Dublin, 1892;
Hon. D.C.L., Durham, 1894; Hon. Fellow of Trinity College, London, 1876;
Lieut.-Colonel of the 20th Middlesex (Artists') Rifle Volunteers, 1876
to 1883 (resigned); then Hon. Colonel and holder of the Volunteer
Decoration; Commander of the Legion of Honour, 1889; Commander of the
Order of Leopold; Knight of the Prussian Order "pour le Merite," and of
the Coburg Order Dem Verdienste.

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST (1881)
_Painted for the Uffizi Gallery_]

FREDERIC LORD LEIGHTON, P.R.A.

AN ILLUSTRATED CHRONICLE

CHAPTER I

HIS EARLY YEARS

To Italy, at whose liberal well-head English Art has so often renewed
itself, we turn naturally for an opening to this chronicle of a great
English artist's career. Frederic Leighton was the painter of our time
who strove hardest to keep alive an Italian ideal of beauty in London;
therefore it is in Italy, the Italy of Raphael and Angelo and his
favourite Giotteschi, that we must seek the true beginnings of his art.

London made its first acquaintance with him and his painting in 1855,
when the picture, _Cimabue's Madonna carried in Procession through the
Streets of Florence_, startled the Royal Academy, and proved that a
'prentice work could be in its way something of a masterpiece. This
picture, the work of an unknown young artist of twenty-five, painted
chiefly in Rome, showed at once a new force and a new quality, and in
its singular feeling for certain of the archaic Italian schools, showed,
too, where for the moment the sympathies of the painter really lay. How
far the potentiality disclosed in it was developed during the forty
years following, how far the ideals in art, which it seemed to declare,
were pursued or departed from, the Royal Academy year by year is
witness. Here, before we turn to consider the history of those later
years, we shall find it interesting to use this first picture as an
index to that period of probation, which is so often the most
interesting part of an artist's history. In accounting for it, and
finding out the determining experiences of the artist's pupilage, we
shall account, also, for much that came after. Although Frankfort and
Paris play their part, the formative influences of that early period, we
shall find, carry us chiefly, and again and again, into Italy.

Frederic Le