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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
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