The drawings of Lord Leighton deserve special consideration. The famous _Lemon Tree_ was made at Capri in the Spring of 1859; it is work that no Pre-Raphaelite could have finished more minutely, yet it has nothing "niggling" in its treatment. In a conversation[10] Lord Leighton is said to have referred to the many days spent upon the production of this study--dwelling specially on the difficulty he experienced in finding again and again each separate leaf in the perspective of the confused branches, as morning after morning he returned at sunrise to continue the work. The drawing of each leaf reveals the close observation which ultimately recorded its particular individuality. You feel that as a shepherd knows his sheep to call each by its name, so the artist must have become familiar with every separate leaf and twig before he had completed his task. The whole is broad and simple, and scarcely suggests the enormous patience which must have been needed to carry out the self-imposed toil. Nothing is shirked, nothing is scamped; from the stem to the outermost leaf, every part in succession reveals equal interest, and yet the whole is not without that larger quality which brings it together in a harmonious whole, so that it is as much the study of a tree as the study of each separate item that composes it. The _Byzantine Well-head_ is another notable instance of similar labour devoted to an architectural subject; this was evidently a favourite with its author; for during his life it hung close by his bed in the simple chamber of his otherwise sumptuous home, a room devoid of luxury and almost ascetic in its appointments.[11] The great mass of studies, on brown paper chiefly, which he had carefully preserved, were purchased by the Fine Art Society, and some two hundred and fifty were exhibited at their gallery in December, 1896, and a selection in facsimile has been published in sumptuous form. In a prefatory note to the catalogue of these studies Mr. S. Pepys Cockerell says: "It is seldom that we are privileged to watch at ease the workings of another's mind, but these drawings, the intimate record of a long life-time, offer an unusually good opportunity. One might call them the confessions of an artist; and anyone who wants to know what Leighton was really like, has only to use his eyes. One thing, at any rate, no one can fail to see, viz., that he had the qualities which result in industry. Whatever success he achieved was only gained after desperate labour. It is curious that while he had the reputation for working with ease, he considered himself to have no facility for anything, whether for art, for writing, or for speaking. I recollect his once saying: 'Thank Heaven, I was never clever at anything,' for he believed with Sir Joshua, that everything is granted to well-deserved labour."