ST. JEROME. 1869. DIPLOMA WORK
Deposited in the Academy on Lord Leighton's election as an Academician[ToList]
"ELECTRA AT THE TOMB OF AGAMEMNON"[ToList]
No complete work evinces more conclusively the force of Leighton's dramatic gift than "Electra"; and—further—masterly and beautiful as are all Leighton's arrangements of drapery, those in this design strike me as specially expressive. They are truly superb. The balance of the masses, and the sweeping lines from the feet up to the shoulder and over the chest, are grandly conceived—the arrangement of the folds notably adding to the suggestion of tragic feeling in the attitude of the figure.
"Icarus," in the picture of the inventive father and the aspiring son, is a beautiful figure of a youth. The conception, design, and colouring of the picture are worthy of Leighton at his best.
Though Egypt had made a deep impression on Leighton's æsthetic emotions, as is obvious from his Diary, his visit there apparently did not actually suggest any pictures except "A Nile Woman"—the only work exhibited at the Academy in 1870—and "Egyptian Slinger Scaring Birds in Harvest-time: Moonrise," exhibited in 1875. A subject suggested by an event, which had occurred some years previously, appears to have been engrossing his mind, before he found expression for it, in the painting "Heracles Wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestis," exhibited 1871. Many persons admired this work more than any that had previously appeared.[42] It evoked the lines from Browning:—