WHEN Lord Leighton's portrait was first exhibited, at the Goupil Gallery, I was standing looking at it, beside Joseph Pennell, who said, "I did not know before that he was a Jew." What is frequently concealed in the face itself is often revealed in a portrait. The movement of the muscles over the forms of the bones deceives the observer, but when everything is fixed and still, as in most portraits, the racial characteristics appear. Many have asked me if "General" Booth was a Jew, but I could always reply in the negative, because no trace of Israelitish blood appears in either of the two portraits I painted of him.
Lord Leighton had the talents of the race and all its virtues, even though an almost invisible line of that extraordinary and, shall I say, mystery blood flowed in his veins. He was a courtier, a persuasive orator, a graceful painter, and a forceful sculptor; a man of the world, a man of affairs, and, as President of the Royal Academy, unequalled in administrative ability. As upon George F. Watts, the sun of Italy had glowed upon his ambrosial curls, and he had brought from that home of Art and civilization the divine blessing of the goddess who presides there. Her spirit and influence were ever upon him, and he often left the cold and truly inhospitable climes of Albion to receive new inspiration at her shrine, the only shrine at which he worshipped.
109
