Perhaps the "Captive Andromache" of 1888 is the quintessence of what he aimed at. The background is the court of an ancient palace, where female slaves are gathered together fetching water. In the centre of the stage, as the leading actress, stands Andromache, who has placed her pitcher on the ground before her, and waits with dignity until the slaves have finished their work. This business of water-drawing has given Leighton an opportunity for combining an assemblage of beautiful poses. The widow of Hector expresses a queenly sorrow with decorum, while the amphora-bearers are standing or walking hither and thither, in the manner demanded by the pictures upon Grecian vases, but without that sureness of line which comes of the real observation of life. In its dignity of style, in the noble composition and purity of the lines which circumscribe the forms with so much distinction and in so impersonal a manner, the picture is an arid and measured work, cold as marble and smooth as porcelain. "Hercules wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestis" might be a Grecian relief upon a sarcophagus, so carefully balanced are the masses and the lines. The pose of Alcestis is that of the nymphs of the Parthenon; only, it would not have been so fine were these not in existence. His "Music Lesson" of 1877 is charming, and his "Elijah in the Wilderness" is a work of style. And in his frescoes in the South Kensington Museum there is a perfect compendium of beautiful motives of gesture. The eye delights to linger over these feminine forms, half nude, half enveloped with drapery, yet it notes, too, that these creations are composed out of the painter's knowledge and artistic reminiscences; there is a want of life in them, because the master has surrendered himself to feeling with the organs of a dead Greek. Leighton's colour is always carefully considered, scrupulously polished, and endowed with the utmost finish, but it never has the magical charm by which one recognises the work of a true colourist. It is rather the result of painstaking study and cultivated taste than of personal feeling. The grace of form is always carefully prepared--a thing which has the consciousness of its own existence. Beautiful and spontaneous as the movements undoubtedly are, one has always a sense that the artist is present, anxiously watching lest any of his actors offend against a law of art. [Illustration: _Brothers, photo._ LEIGHTON. THE LAST WATCH OF HERO. (_By permission of the Corporation of Manchester, the owners of the picture._)]