Rossetti, writing to his friend William Allingham, May 11th, 1855, says: "There is a big picture of _Cimabue_, one of his works in procession, by a new man, living abroad, named Leighton--a huge thing, which the Queen has bought, which everyone talks of. The R.A.'s have been gasping for years for someone to back against Hunt and Millais, and here they have him, a fact that makes some people do the picture injustice in return. It was _very_ uninteresting to me at first sight; but on looking more at it, I think there is great richness of arrangement, a quality which, when _really_ existing, as it does in the best old masters, and perhaps hitherto in no living man--at any rate English--ranks among the great qualities. "But I am not quite sure yet either of this or of the faculty for colour, which I suspect exists very strongly, but is certainly at present under a thick veil of paint, owing, I fancy, to too much continental study. One undoubted excellence it has--facility, without much neatness or ultra-cleverness in the execution, which is greatly like that of Paul Veronese; and the colour may mature in future works to the same resemblance, I fancy. There is much feeling for beauty, too, in the women. As for purely intellectual qualities, expression, intention, etc., there is little as yet of them; but I think that in art richness of arrangement is so nearly allied to these, that where it exists (in an earnest man) they will probably supervene. However, the choice of subject, though interesting in a certain way, leaves one quite in the dark as to what faculty the man may have for representing incident or passionate emotion. But I believe, as far as this showing goes, that he possesses qualities which the mass of our artists aim at chiefly, and only seem to possess. Whether he have those of which neither they nor he give sign, I cannot tell; but he is said to be only twenty-four years old. There is something very French in his work, at present, which is the most disagreeable thing about it; but this I dare say would leave him if he came to England."[12] In the year following Leighton's academical _début_, he exhibited a picture entitled _The Triumph of Music_, which the "Athenæum," hereafter so sympathetic towards his work, described as "anything but a triumph of art." Partly, perhaps, because of the general tone of discouragement in all the criticisms of this year, the artist did not send in anything to the Academy of 1857. In 1858 his two pictures--_The Fisherman and the Syren_, and _Count Paris_, although admirably conceived, and extremely interesting to us now, received no word of friendly criticism that is worth recording.