Smith, whose representatives, after his death, in 1910, gave it to
the nation, and it is now in the National Gallery of British Art.
Mr. Heatherley never went away for a holiday; he once had to go out
of town on business and did not return till the next day; one of the
students asked him how he had got on, saying no doubt he had enjoyed
the change and that he must have found it refreshing to sleep for
once out of London.

"No," said Heatherley, "I did not like it. Country air has no body."

The consequence was that, whenever there was a holiday and the school
was shut, Heatherley employed the time in mending the skeleton;
Butler's picture represents him so engaged in a corner of the studio.
In this way he got his model for nothing. Sometimes he hung up a
looking-glass near one of his windows and painted his own portrait.
Many of these he painted out, but after his death we found a little
store of them in his rooms, some of the early ones very curious. Of
the best of them one is now at Canterbury, New Zealand, one at St.
John's College, Cambridge, and one at the Schools, Shrewsbury.

This is Butler's own account of himself, taken from a letter to Sir
Julius von Haast; although written in 1865 it is true of his mode of
life for many years:


I have been taking lessons in painting ever since I arrived. I was
always very fond of it and mean to stick to it; it suits me and I am
not without hopes that I shall do well at it. I live almost the life
of a recluse, seeing very few people and going nowhere that I can
help--I mean in the way of parties and so forth; if my friends had