Note 70 — Chapter V · ToC

The owners of Leighton's pictures must feel satisfaction, not only in the fact that in all cases the beauty of the forms and arrangements of line grow on the eye more and more the longer they are studied, but also that the work itself improves by keeping. I noticed this to be the case very decidedly in "Cymon and Iphigenia." I had seen it when completed, the day before it left the studio in 1884; and when it returned there in 1901 (the owner, Sir Cuthbert Quilter, having kindly lent it for exhibition), and was placed in precisely the same light, I was surprised to see how much it had improved in tone during those seventeen years; it had gained so very greatly in those qualities which suggest the feeling Leighton wished it to inspire.