A picture of a little girl with yellow hair and pale blue eyes, entitled with a verse by Robert Browning:
"Yellow and pale as ripened corn
Which Autumn's kiss frees,—grain from sheath,—
Such was her hair, while her eyes beneath
Showed Spring's faint violets freshly born,"
was in the same exhibition, and also a design for the reverse of the Jubilee medallion, executed for her Majesty's Government.
In 1888 appeared another large work, which, although not absolutely a procession, has much in common with the Cimabue, the Syracusan Bride, and The Daphnephoria. It was entitled Captive Andromache, and accompanied by a fragment of the "Iliad," translated by E. B. Browning:
... "Some standing by
Marking thy tears fall, shall say, 'This is she,
The wife of that same Hector that fought best
Of all the Trojans when all fought for Troy.'"
This, and a Portrait of Amy, Lady Coleridge, were the artist's only contributions to the Royal Academy of 1888. The Portraits of the Misses Stewart Hodgson is also of this year, which saw four landscape studies exhibited at the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours, and five at the Royal Society of British Artists, Suffolk Street.
The Sibyl, exhibited in 1889, is a full-length figure swathed in lilac drapery, seated with her legs crossed, on a chair, her chin supported by her left hand, and gazing out of the picture. Beside her are scrolls, and a sombre sky is behind the figure. Invocation, a girl in white robes with arms raised above her head, and a Portrait of Mrs. F. Lucas, were also shown; but Greek Girls playing at Ball is not only the most important, but is also a picture that shows the mannerism of Lord Leighton's treatment of drapery at its finest. Elsewhere the undulating snaky coils may be somewhat distressing, here they float in the air and help the suggestion of movement. The landscape at the back is also both typical and beautiful. An Elegy was the fifth of the artist's contributions to the Academy of 1889.
In 1890 The Bath of Psyche appeared at the Academy. This at once established its position as a popular favourite, and has probably been more widely reproduced than any other. It was purchased under the terms of the Chantrey Bequest, and is now in the Tate Gallery. It was suggested, so Mr. M. H. Spielmann tells us, by the "paper-knife" picture, as Lord Leighton called it, which he had painted for Sir L. Alma-Tadema's wall screen. Solitude was also shown this year, and the Tragic Poetess, a full-length figure, clad in blue and purple drapery, on a terrace, with the sea beyond. The fourth picture at the Academy was a very faithfully painted transcript of The Arab Hall, at No. 2, Holland Park Road.
