Leighton and Millais
From the other end of the scale comes another "growl" in the same year—that of the professional model, in Phil May's picture, against Burne-Jones who had recently made a drawing of Labour for the Daily Chronicle: "I reckon 'e'll be on the pavement next." Personalities, rather than principles or theories, interested Punch at this period, and in 1896 and 1897 the circle of his eminent Victorian friends was reduced by the passing of three ornaments of British Art, all of them Academicians and two successively presidents of the Academy. Of the two sets of verses on Leighton, the second is much the better. Punch takes for his text Watts's saying that Leighton had painted many pictures, but that his life was nobler than them all:—
Noblesse oblige: his manners matched his art;
Fine painter-skill, the bearing of a prince.
The writer alludes to the malignant disparagement indulged in by his detractors and sums up:—
Great if not quite among the greatest, here
A noble artist of a noble life
Rests with a fame that lives, and need not fear
Detraction or the hour's ephemeral strife.
Leighton's generosity and munificence to brother artists deserved all and more than all that Punch said: his fame as an artist has hardly borne out the prediction of the last couplet. Sir John Millais, his successor, was linked by more intimate ties from the days of Once a Week. Du Maurier was one of his dearest friends, and Punch claimed to have been alone, save for the Spectator, in acclaiming the genius of his early work. As he happily says, "from P.R.B, to P.R.A.—that tale is worth the telling." Millais only lived a few months to enjoy his honour, and on his death in the summer of 1896 Punch dwelt on his triple endowment of health, heartiness and power, his entirely English spirit, his mastery as a painter, and his genius for friendship.