"BACCHANTE." 1892
By permission of Messrs. Henry Graves & Co., the owners of the Copyright[ToList]
STUDY IN OILS FOR "BACCHANTE." 1892
By permission of Mrs. Stewart Hodgson[ToList]
2 Holland Park Road, Kensington, W.,
November 2, 1892.
Dear Wells,—Best thanks for your cheque and kind note. You will be glad to hear that the removal is going on capitally. I did not wait for the full money-promise; I had determined to do the thing, and I set it going on my personal guarantee when we were £300 short of the full sum. Now we have the money, young Lehmann munificently sending a cheque for that amount.
The great monument having been moved to its right position, the next question was to raise funds for the completion of the work. This was perplexing Leighton during the last weeks of his life. Having written a letter to the Times in 1895, and the donations having come in but scantily, he was puzzled to know what further steps to take.
Leighton himself, so distinguished a sculptor, took a special interest in all efforts to promote the knowledge and love of plastic art. When, therefore, his old friend Mr. Walter Copland Perry called a meeting at Grosvenor House—at which the late Duke of Westminster presided—to lay before it his scheme for the formation of a gallery of casts from all the best Greek and Roman statues, Leighton was one of the most zealous and active promoters of the scheme.[79]
Leighton was commissioned by the Government to execute the medallion for Queen Victoria's Jubilee in 1887. M. Edouard Lantéri, now Professor of Modelling at the South Kensington schools, assisted him in carrying out the design, and became an ardent admirer of the President. M. Lantéri described to me how certain difficulties occurred in the casting. Leighton said they must work on till these were set right—and they did work eighteen hours on end.
All to whom the work of Watts, Burne-Jones, and Rossetti has appealed, owe Leighton a debt of gratitude. Before the Grosvenor Gallery Exhibition of his work took place in 1882, Watts, in talking to me of the unpopularity of the pictures he felt most inspired to paint, would often give as a proof of this that, with one exception, no one had ever cared to engrave his pictures; and truly, without Mr. Fred Hollyer's photographs the general public would have known little of the special value of this work, nor of the art of Rossetti and Burne-Jones. Mr. Hollyer's photographs are not merely copies—they have as art an atmosphere of charm in themselves; they render what may be called the soul of a picture. He writes:—