[Illustration: HELEN OF TROY (1865) _By permission of Messrs. Henry Graves and Co._] [Illustration: ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE (1864)] To this year, also, belongs a portrait of _The late Miss Lavinia I'Anson_, a circular panel showing the sky for background. This was exhibited again in the winter Academy of 1897. In 1865 the artist showed once again his eclectic sympathies, by the variety of the subject-pictures that he sent to the Academy, ranging from _David_ to _Helen of Troy_. In his tenderly conceived _David_, the Psalmist is seen gazing at two doves in the sky above; he, sunk in a profound reverie, is seated upon a house-top overlooking some neighbouring hills. The whole is large in its handling and treatment, and in the simplicity of its drapery recalls several of the famous illustrations the artist contributed to Dalziel's Bible Gallery. It was exhibited with the quotation, "Oh, that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away and be at rest." With the delightful _Helen of Troy_ we are recalled to the third book of the Iliad, when Iris bids Helen go and see the general truce made pending the duel between Paris and Menelaus, of which she is to be the prize. So Helen, having summoned her maids and "shadowed her graces with white veils," rose and passed along the ramparts of Troy. In the picture the light falls on her shoulders and her hair, while her face and the whole of the front of her form are shadowed over, with somewhat mystical effect. To the same year belongs _In St. Mark's_, a picture of a lady with a child in her arms leaving the church, a lovely and finished study of colour; _The Widow's Prayer_; and _Mother and Child_, a graceful reminder of a gentler world than Helen's.