in the background, hence its name.
_Rubinella_, a girl with red gold hair was shown at the Summer
Exhibition and a large number of sketches and studies at the Winter
Exhibition of the Grosvenor Gallery this year.

In 1881, the portrait of the Painter, painted by invitation in 1880 for
the collection of autograph portraits of artists in the Uffizi Gallery,
Florence, deserves particular mention. Not even Mr. Watts' best portrait
of Leighton is quite so like as this, which shows the striking head of
the artist to great effect, assisted by the decorative President's robe
and insignia. The _Idyll_, shown the same year, has been compared by
some critics with the _Cymon and Iphigenia_, the scene and circumstance
of both being to a certain degree similar, while there are similar
effects in both of colour and of composition. In the _Idyll_, we have a
lovely female figure, lying at full length, attended by a second nymph,
and by a piping man, all grouped beneath an arm of a beech tree, that
extends overhead and shadows the upland ridge on which they have come to
rest, while they gaze on a river winding among sunlit meads. The water
reflects the blue and white of sky and clouds; the land is dashed by
shadows. The nymphs' robes are red, blue, and pale yellow.

[Illustration: PHRYNE AT ELEUSIS (1882)]

[Illustration: DAY DREAMS (1882)
_By permission of the Fine Art Society_]

We ought not to overlook another idyllic picture in the same exhibition,
_Whispers_, an illustration of Horace's well-known line, "Lenesque sub
noctem susurri." In this charming work, amid masses of crimson flowers
and green leaves, two lovers are seen seated upon a marble bench, while
he whispers tenderly in her ear, and she listens with dreamy eyes and
maidenly mien. The noble picture of _Elisha and the Shunamite's Son_
(reproduced at p. 114) was also shown this year, as well as _Bianca_, a
fair-haired girl in a white dress, standing with folded arms, _Viola_,
and two portraits, _Mrs. Augustus Ralli_, exhibited at the Royal
Academy, and _Mrs. Algernon Sartoris_, at the Grosvenor Gallery.

In the 1882 Academy appeared two of the most popular of Sir Frederic's
pictures, _Wedded_ and _Day Dreams_. In the latter, a fair Sybarite is
pressing her cheek against her hands, as she stands near a tapestry,
with eyes gazing far away, the images of love-dreams in them; her purple
mantle, embroidered with silver, produces a charming effect of colo