MEN I HAVE PAINTED
chair, and planted his two doubled-up fists down on the table.
"Don't you think they will have to elect him some day? Most of the young men admire him, and even one of the older members of the Academy," I ventured rather timidly. "No! no! Not at all. We do not want him; his influence is bad. Look at his drawing, his colour! The long, skinny arms and fantastic, pink fingers are enough to frighten any woman away from his studio—and his great brush-sweeps, mere daubs without meaning." "But," I murmured, when the chance permitted, in a lull, "you might have said the same of Sir Joshua, of Raeburn, and, more particularly, of Romney. Are not Romney's portraits as freely painted, without Sargent's accuracy of drawing? "Pooh! pooh! mere chance and guesswork. He relies upon accidental tints and colours and blendings to produce an effect, without any solid basis of drawing, or painstaking execution." And so they continued without a single word of praise for work which had already been acclaimed in Paris, and was attracting in the more conservative quarters of London an attention that was soon to develop into admiration, and ultimately to create a school of portraiture that became universal.
These two men were both sincere. Apart from that spontaneous and irresistible jealousy and chagrin that men of established position often feel at the too sudden flaring up of youthful genius which casts a shadow upon them, and tends to relegate them to comparative obscurity, there could have been no motive underlying this frank expression of feeling. Did they think that the prestige of English Art was endangered?
In Lord Leighton the Academy lost a great president.
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