578. APRIL LOVE. (A. Hughes(1))

The Royal Academy Exhibition 1856

Exquisite in every way; lovely in colour, most subtle in the quivering expression of the lips, and sweetness of the tender face, shaken, like a leaf by winds upon its dew, and hesitating back into peace. A second very disgraceful piece of bad placing(2) the thrusting this picture thus aside!

(1)[Mr. Arthur Hughes (b. 1830), though not an enrolled member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, was closely identified with them, and always worked in sympathy with their aims. He combined with Millais and Rossetti to illustrate William Allingham's Day and Night Songs, and he was one of the group by whom the frescoes in the Oxford Union were executed. "April Love" was bought from the painter by William Morris. It is now in the possession of Mr. H. Boddiugton. A reproduction of it, with an appreciation of the painter, may be found in P. H. Bate's English Pre-Raphaelite Painters.]

(2) [For the first, see above, p. 52.]