"Those who place the brush behind the pencil, under the pretence that _form_ is before all things, make a very great mistake. Form _is certainly all important_; one cannot study it enough; _but_ the greater part of _form_ falls within the province of the tabooed _brush_. The everlasting hobby of _contour_ (which belongs to the drawing material) is first the _place_ where the _form_ comes in; what, however, reveals true knowledge of form, is a powerful, organic, refined finish of modelling, full of feeling and knowledge--and that is the affair of the brush (_Pinsel_)." In January 1860 Leighton wrote to Steinle: "You will perhaps be surprised, but, in spite of my fanatic preference for colour I promised myself to be a draughtsman before I became a colourist," and in fact Leighton was fighting, throughout his whole career, against allowing the sensuous qualities in his art to override those which the teaching of Steinle had proved to his nature to be the most truly elevating and ennobling. Up to the age of thirty he had been overshadowed by the influence of others in the matter of actual technique in painting. From the time he settled in London he freed himself from the tutelage of all masters. As we have read in his letters, his intention was to do so in 1856 when he painted "The Triumph of Music;" but at that time he failed in finding his real self in his painting of that picture, and fully realised that he must _reculer pour mieux sauter_, returning in the autumn of that year to Rome to be fed by the greatest art of the past, and to study again, "face to face with Nature--to follow it, to watch it, and to copy, closely, faithfully, ingenuously--as Ruskin suggests, choosing nothing and rejecting nothing." The studies of a Pumpkin Flower (Meran), Branch of Vine (Bellosquardo), Cyclamen (Tivoli), reproduced in Chapter III., and others, were made during this autumn of 1856. In a letter written to Mr. M. Spielmann, a few years before his death, Leighton describes the procedure he pursued in accomplishing a serious work.