In 1863 he showed Eucharis, a half-length figure of a white-robed girl, with a basket of fruit on her head; Jezebel and Ahab; A Cross-bow Man; and A Girl Feeding Peacocks; with these we complete the list of his work as an outsider.
GOLDEN HOURS (1864)
CHAPTER III
Year by Year—1864 to 1869
In 1864 Leighton was made an Associate of the Royal Academy. To its summer exhibition he contributed three pictures, showing great and various power in their composition. Dante at Verona, Orpheus and Eurydice, and Golden Hours. The first of these, one of the most remarkable pictures of our modern English school, in which "Dante" appears, is a large work, with figures something less than life-size. It illustrates the verses in the "Paradiso":
"Thou shalt prove
How salt the savour is of others' bread;
How hard the passage, to descend and climb
By others' stairs. But that shall gall thee most
Will be the worthless and vile company
With whom thou must be thrown into the straits,
For all ungrateful, impious all and mad
Shall turn against thee."