Thenceforward his progress was an almost unbroken series of successes, gained by superb mastery of craftsmanship, and by the splendid confidence in himself that put his intentions always beyond the possibility of doubt. With few exceptions his pictures, to the end of his life, were worthy to rank with the best that the British school can show, great in accomplishment, admirable in style, and attractive always by their frankness of manner and purity of motive. In some ways he enlarged his borders, for in 1871 he made, with Chill October, his first digression into landscape without figures, and began that array of important studies of the open air which reveal most instructively his limitless patience and searching power of observation.
As a portrait painter also he developed superlative gifts, adding year by year to a collection of masterpieces unequalled by any of his contemporaries. He was fortunate in his sitters, and the list of his productions in this branch of art includes a large proportion of the most beautiful women and distinguished men who have graced the latter half of the century. He immortalised impartially leaders of fashion, pretty children, noted politicians, and people eminent in many professions; and in his rendering of these various types he missed nothing of the individuality and distinctive character with which each one was endowed. Here especially his Pre-Raphaelite training stood him in good stead; for the habit of close analysis and careful investigation had been so impressed upon him by the experiences of his youth, that his instinctive judgment was now perfectly reliable, and his ability to decide promptly and with certainty about the aspects of his subject which were fittest for pictorial record had become absolutely complete.
In this succession of portraits some stand out commandingly as notable performances even for an artist who was always distinguished—for example, Mrs. Bischoffsheim (1873), Miss Eveleen Tennant (1874), Mrs. Jopling (1879), Mrs. Perugini (1880), Sir Henry Irving (1884), The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone (1885), J. C. Hook, R.A. (1882), and The Marquis of Salisbury (1883)—marking great moments in his career; just as from time to time figure compositions of rare importance, like The North-West Passage (1874), Effie Deans (1877), The Princes in the Tower (1878), and Speak! Speak! (1895), punctuated the progress of his intellectual and imaginative evolution. He was always, to the last day of his life, ambitious and eager to grapple with problems of technical expression. Courage to face the supreme difficulties of his profession never failed him. He had no idea of avoiding responsibilities, or of finding in an easy convention a way to evade his duty to art; and he tried consistently to bring his production up to the high level that would satisfy his ideals. When he missed his aim—and there is no such thing as unvarying success for any artist—it was not for want of thought or sincere effort, but rather from over-anxiety. He once said of himself, "I may honestly say that I never consciously put an idle touch upon canvas, and that I have always been earnest and hard-working; yet the worst pictures I ever painted in my life are those into which I threw most trouble and labour"; and in these few words he summed up his whole history.
It was characteristic of him that the honours which were heaped upon him in his later years should have diminished neither the strength of his work nor the charm of his personality. Affectation or self-consciousness were the last things that were possible to such a nature with its almost boyish energy and magnificent vitality. Yet he had every reason to be proud of success that had come to him, not by fortunate chance, but as a result of his own tenacity. He was made an Officer of the Legion of Honour, and received the Medaille d'Honneur at the Paris International Exhibition, in 1878; the degree of D.C.L. was conferred upon him at Oxford in 1880, and at Durham in 1893; he was elected a Trustee of the National Portrait Gallery in 1881, a Foreign Associate of the Académie des Beaux Arts in 1882, and President of the Royal Academy in 1896; he was created a Baronet in 1885, and an Officer of the Order of Leopold in 1895; and was, besides, an Officer of the Order of St. Maurice, and the Prussian Order "Pour la Mérite," and a member of the Academies of Vienna, Belgium, Antwerp, and of St. Luke, Rome, and San Fernando, Madrid. He was one of the few Englishmen invited to contribute his portrait to the great collection of pictures of artists painted by themselves in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence. Such a record proves most cogently the manner in which the public estimate of his capacity changed as years went on; it is instructive to compare its unanimity of recognition with the story of the time when art teachers were urging their pupils to greet the name of Millais with hisses, and were holding up his work, and that of his associates, to the bitterest execration.
The post of President of the Royal Academy he held for only six months, for he succeeded Lord Leighton on February 20th, 1896, and died on 13th of August in the same year. His election, however, rounded off appropriately that long association with the Academy to which he referred in his speech at the 1895 banquet, at which he presided in the absence of Lord Leighton. "I must tell you briefly my connection with this Academy. I entered the Antique School as a probationer, when I was eleven years of age; then became a student in the Life School; and I have risen from stage to stage until I reached the position I now hold of Royal Academician: so that, man and boy, I have been intimately connected with this Academy for more than half a century. I have received here a free education as an artist—an advantage any lad may enjoy who can pass a qualifying examination—and I owe the Academy a debt of gratitude I never can repay. I can, however, make this return—I can give it my love. I love everything belonging to it; the casts I have drawn from as a boy, the books I have consulted in our Library, the very benches I have sat on." No other teaching institution had, indeed, had any part in his education; no other art society had given him assistance at a moment when the world was against him; and in no other direction had such practical belief in the greatness of his future been manifested. Truly, he owed a debt of gratitude to the Academy, and he repaid it by being ever one of its most active supporters, and by doing infinite credit to its best traditions.
There was something peculiarly pathetic in the fact that his life should have ended just when he had reached the position that must have seemed to him, after his long and intimate connection with the Academy, the most honourable to which he could aspire. To be the head of the institution that he loved so well, and to be hailed as chief in the place that had seen every stage of his development, from childhood to ripe maturity, could not fail to be anything but exquisitely gratifying to a man of his nature. But almost at the moment of his election it appeared that there was little time left him in which to enjoy the honour that had crowned his many years of devotion to the great principles of art. The fatal disease that had gripped him a little while before was not to be shaken off, and was sapping rapidly and effectually even his superb vitality. He worked on, however, almost to the end, hopeful even in the midst of suffering, active in carrying out the duties of his office, and busy as ever with the canvases that crowded his studio. He was fully represented in the Academy Exhibition of 1896, by a group of portraits, and by a picture, A Forerunner, which showed no sign of failing strength or of any relaxation in his grasp of the essentials of his craft.
Then, with painful suddenness, came the verdict of his doctors, that his case was hopeless. The throat trouble, that had been growing month by month more acute and distressing, was pronounced to be cancer and incurable. In June the disease had made such strides that the end seemed to be imminent, but an operation gave him some relief, and his life was prolonged till the middle of August, when at last death released him from his agony. He passed away at the house in Palace Gate, Kensington, which had been the scene of the many triumphs of his later years, dying as he had lived, full of courage and patience, fearing nothing, and meeting his fate with cheerful resignation. On August 20th, he was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, beside his old friend Lord Leighton, whom only a few months before he had helped to lay to rest.
His death not only left a gap in the ranks of art, but it also took away, while he was yet in the full enjoyment of his powers, a man whose sterling qualities had attracted a host of friends. His frankness and honesty, his geniality and kindliness, and, above all, his manly wholesomeness, without taint of modern decadence or morbidity, endeared him to everyone with whom he came in contact. He was typically English, in the best sense, with all the physical and mental attributes that have enabled our race to dominate the world, a lover of the country, a good shot, a keen fisherman, and a fearless horseman. The very look of him, with his stalwart, well set-up figure, and handsome, self-reliant face, conveyed the impression of perfect health of mind and body, and declared the inexhaustible vigour of his nature.