Frederic Lord Leighton Part 5

In 1895, the last year of the artist's working life, he sent six pictures to the Academy, and completed the wall decoration at the Royal Exchange (here ill.u.s.trated), _Phoenicians Bartering with Britons_. The paintings were ent.i.tled, _Flaming June_ (a picture reproduced in colours for a Christmas number of the "Graphic"), in which the "broad" painting of the sea beyond was a notable exception to the artist's usual handling; _Lachrymae_, a standing figure in robes of black and blue green, resting her arm upon a Doric column; _'Twixt Hope and Fear_, a seated figure of a black-haired Greek girl, robed in white and olive, with a sheep-skin thrown around her; _The Maid with her Yellow Hair_, a girlish figure in lemon-coloured drapery, reading from a red-backed book; _Listener_, a child seated with crossed legs on a fur rug; and a _Study of a Girl's Head_, with auburn, wavy hair.

In the 1896 Academy _Clytie_ was the only picture. In Lord Leighton's studio in various stages of completion were a _Bacchante_, a half-length figure of a fair-haired girl crowned with leaves, and a leopard skin over her shoulder; _The Fair Persian_, a bust of a girl with flowing dark hair, crowned by a jewelled circlet; and _The Vestal_, a half-length figure of a girl in white drapery, these were all exhibited at the Winter Exhibition of 1897.

To _Clytie_, his last picture, a small monograph has been devoted by the Fine Art Society. In this we read: "'Thank goodness my ailment has not interfered with my capacity for work, for I have never had a better appet.i.te for it, nor I believe done better. I was idle for five months in the summer, but since my return I have been working hard and have produced the pictures you see.' Thus he spoke to the present writer [of the monograph in question] as he led the way across his studio....

Turning to the _Clytie_ he continued: 'This I have been at work upon all the morning. Orchardson has been so good as to say I have never done anything finer than the sky. You know the story. I have shown the G.o.ddess in adoration before the setting sun, whose last rays are permeating her whole being. With upraised arms she is entreating her beloved one not to forsake her. A flood of golden light saturates the scene, and to carry out my intention, I have changed my model's hair from black to auburn. To the right is a small altar, upon which is an offering of fruit, and upon a pillar beyond I shall show the feet of a statue of Apollo.'

"But a few days after this occurrence the dead President lay in semi-state in his coffin, before the picture. A drawing in the 'Graphic'

(January 26th, 1896) shows the interior of the studio, with the figure of Clytie, in her att.i.tude of despair, stretching her arms above the body of her creator."

Here the record, year by year, is closed. A few pictures seem to have escaped the honours of exhibition. One,[8] _A n.o.ble Lady of Venice_, in possession of Lord Armstrong, does not appear to have been exhibited. It is probably the picture which was sold at Christie's in 1875 for 950 guineas. A _Lady with Pomegranates_, which sold for 765 guineas at the sale of Baron Grant's pictures in 1877, does not appear in our list of exhibited works; nor, it may be, are all the early pictures included therein. But the official catalogues of the Royal Academy May Exhibitions, and of the special Winter Exhibition devoted to the artist's works, have been freely drawn upon for description, and to the list of his life's work, as it appeared in the first edition of this work, many additions have been made.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RIZPAH (1893)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BRACELET (1894) _By permission of Messrs. T. Agnew and Sons_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FATIDICA (1894) _By permission of Messrs. T Agnew and Sons_]

CHAPTER VI

HIS METHOD OF PAINTING

For particulars of the wonderfully thorough "method," which Leighton used in preparing his pictures, we cannot do better than quote the following admirable account by Mr. M. H. Spielmann (published during the painter's life), which he has allowed us to reprint here.[9]

"I have said that the sense of line in composition, in figure and drapery, is one of the chief qualities of the artist; and the conviction that the method in which he places them upon canvas with such unerring success--for it may be said that the President rarely, if ever, produces an ugly form in a picture--would be both interesting and instructive, prompted me to learn in what manner his effects are produced. This I have done, having special regard to one of his Academy pictures, _The Sibyl_, which, being a single figure, simplifies greatly the explanation of the mode of procedure. This explanation holds good in every case, be the composition great or small, elaborate or simple; the _modus operandi_ is always the same.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BACCHANTE (1896) _By permission of Messrs. Henry Graves and Co._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HIT" (1893) _By permission of "The Art Journal"_]

"Having by good fortune observed in a model an extraordinarily fine and 'Michelangelesque' formation of the hand and wrist--an articulation as rare to find as it is anatomically beautiful and desirable--he bethought him of a subject that would enable him to introduce his _trouvaille_. As but one att.i.tude could display the special formation to advantage, the idea of a Sibyl, sitting brooding beside her oracular tripod, was soon evolved, but not so soon was its form determined and fixed. Like Mr. Watts, Sir Frederic Leighton thinks out the whole picture before he puts brush to canvas, or chalk to paper; but, unlike Mr. Watts, once he is decided upon his scheme of colour, the arrangement of line, the disposition of the folds, down to the minutest details, he seldom, if ever, alters a single line. And the reason is evident. In Sir Frederic's pictures--which are, above all, decorations in the real sense of the word--the design is a pattern in which every line has its place and its proper relation to other lines, so that the disturbing of one of them, outside of certain limits, would throw the whole out of gear. Having thus determined his picture in his mind's eye, he in the majority of cases makes a sketch in black and white chalk upon brown paper to fix it. In the first sketch, the care with which the folds have been broadly arranged will be evident, and, if it be compared with the finished picture, the very slight degree in which the general scheme has been departed from will convince the reader of the almost scientific precision of the artist's line of action. But there is a good reason for this determining of the draperies before the model is called in; and it is this. The nude model, no matter how practised he or she may be, never moves or stands or sits, in these degenerate days, with exactly the same freedom as when draped; action or pose is always different--not so much from a sense of mental constraint as from the unusual liberty experienced by the limbs, to which the muscular action invariably responds when the body is released from the discipline and confinement of clothing.

"The picture having been thus determined, the model is called in, and is posed as nearly as possible in the att.i.tude desired. As nearly as possible I say, for, as no two faces are exactly alike, no two models ever entirely resemble one another in body or muscular action, and cannot, therefore, pose in such a manner as exactly to correspond with either another model or another figure--no matter how correctly the latter may be drawn. From the model the artist makes the careful outline, in brown paper, a true transcript from life, which may entail some slight corrections of the original design in the direction of modifying the att.i.tude and general appearance of the figure. This would be rendered necessary, probably by the bulk and material of the drapery.

So far, of course, the artist's attention is engaged exclusively by 'form,' 'colour' being always treated more or less ideally. The figure is now placed in its surroundings, and established in exact relation to the canvas. The result is the first true sketch of the entire design, figure and background, and is built up of the two previous ones. It must be absolutely accurate in the distribution of s.p.a.ces, for it has subsequently to be 'squared off' on to the canvas, which is ordered to the exact scale of the sketch. At this moment, the design being finally determined, the sketch in oil colours is made. It has been deferred till now, because the placing of the colours is, of course, of as much importance as the harmony. This done, the canvas is for the first time produced, and thereon is enlarged the design, the painter re-drawing the outline--never departing a hair's breadth from the outlines and forms already obtained--and then highly finishing the whole figure in warm monochrome from the life. Every muscle, every joint, every crease is there, although all this careful painting is shortly to be hidden with the draperies; such, however, is the only method of insuring absolute correctness of drawing. The fourth stage completed, the artist returns once more to his brown paper, re-copies the outline accurately from the picture, on a larger scale than before, and resumes his studies of draperies in greater detail and with still greater precision, dealing with them in sections, as parts of a h.o.m.ogeneous whole. The draperies are now laid with infinite care on to the living model, and are made to approximate as closely as possible to the arrangement given in the first sketch, which, as it was not haphazard, but most carefully worked out, must of necessity be adhered to. They have often to be drawn piecemeal, as a model cannot by any means always retain the att.i.tude sufficiently long for the design to be wholly carried out at one cast. This arrangement is effected with special reference to painting--that is to say, giving not only form and light and shade, but also the relation and 'values' of tones. The draperies are drawn over, and are made to conform exactly to the forms copied from the nudes of the underpainted picture.

This is a cardinal point, because in carrying out the picture the folds are found fitting mathematically on to the nude, or nudes, first established on the canvas. The next step then is to transfer these draperies to the canvas on which the design has been squared off, and this is done with flowing colour in the same monochrome as before over the nudes, to which they are intelligently applied, and which nudes must never--mentally at least--be lost sight of. The canvas has been prepared with a grey tone, lighter or darker, according to the subject in hand, and the effect to be produced. The background and accessories being now added, the whole picture presents a more or less completed aspect--resembling that, say, of a print of any warm tone. In the case of draperies of very vigorous tone, a rich flat local colour is probably rubbed over them, the modelling underneath being, though thin, so sharp and definite as to a.s.sert itself through this wash. Certain portions of the picture might probably be prepared with a wash or flat tinting of a colour the _opposite_ of that which it is eventually to receive. A blue sky, for instance, would possibly have a soft, ruddy tone spread over the canvas--the sky, which is a very definite and important part of the President's compositions, being as completely drawn in monochrome as any other portion of the design; or for rich blue mountains a strong orange wash or tint might be used as a bed. The structure of the picture being thus absolutely complete, and the effect distinctly determined by a sketch which it is the painter's aim to equal in the big work, he has nothing to think of but colour, and with that he now proceeds deliberately, but rapidly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NUDE STUDY FOR "CAPTIVE ANDROMACHE"]

[Ill.u.s.tration: STUDY FOR A FIGURE IN "CAPTIVE ANDROMACHE"]

[Ill.u.s.tration: STUDY FOR "ANDROMACHE"]

"Such is the method by which Sir Frederic Leighton finds it convenient to build up his pictures. The labour entailed by such a system as this is, of course, enormous, more especially when the composition to be worked out is of so complex a character as the _Captive Andromache_ of last year, every figure and group of which were treated with the same completeness and detail as we have seen to attend the production of so simple a picture as _The Sibyl_. Deliberateness of workmanship and calculation of effect, into which inspiration of the moment is never allowed to enter, are the chief characteristics of the painter's craftsmanship. The inspiration stage was practically pa.s.sed when he took the crayon in his hand; and to this circ.u.mstance probably is to be a.s.signed the absence of realism which arrests the attention of the beholder."

Mr. Spielmann has instanced, in the above account, the tragic and lovely _Captive Andromache_, exhibited in 1888; and we may further add that exquisite painting of _Greek Girls playing at Ball_, of 1889; or the still more exquisite _Bath of Psyche_, of the year following. All three are full of technical delicacy and finesse. For other qualities take that radiantly pictured myth, the _Perseus and Andromeda_, or the _Return of Persephone_ (both of 1891); or the lovely _Clytie_ of 1892, whose sunset background was painted at Malinmore, on the west coast of Donegal; or the _Atalanta_ or the _Rizpah_ of 1893.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STUDY FOR "PERSEUS AND ANDROMEDA"]

[Ill.u.s.tration: STUDY FOR "THE BATH OF PSYCHE"]

[Ill.u.s.tration: STUDY FOR "SOLITUDE"]

The memorable picture, first named of these, which shows Andromache at the Well, is in particular a most characteristic example of the artist's larger style. In it, true to his cla.s.sic predilections, he gives a new setting to the touching old story of Andromache's captivity. Following up the earlier scene in the "Iliad," where Andromache begs her husband Hector not to sally forth to battle, but to stay and defend the city, and where, finding her prayers in vain, and weeping, she bids Hector farewell, the picture shows the fulfilment of Andromache's fears and the dire prophecy which Hector had recalled to his wife.

By way of contrast to this sombre canvas, take the glowing and brilliant colours of the _Perseus and Andromeda_, one of the three pictures shown at the Academy in 1891. The painting of the surroundings of Andromeda, the deep blue water in the sea lagoon beneath, and these radiant elemental people of air and light, provides such a glow of colour, as haunts the eye for long after one has gazed one's fill upon it.

Something of the same feeling for the spirit that is in the forces of the earth, lurks behind many of Leighton's representments of the cla.s.sic myths. It is certainly to be found, with a difference, in the _Return of Persephone_, exhibited with the _Perseus_, which becomes in the artist's hands a profound allegory of the return of Spring, with all kind of symbolical meanings in the three figures of Proserpine, Ceres, and Hermes, that are seen meeting before the mouth of Hades. _The Spirit of the Summit_, one of the latest of these embodiments of the relation of Man to Nature, may be read to mean Man's finer spirit of aspiration, and the mountainous imagination of Art itself. It is characteristic of the artist that, in the later years of his career, at a time when most artists and men are apt to give up something of their earlier pursuit of ideals, he retained undiminished a feeling for the unaccomplished heights of the imagination. _The Spirit of the Summit_ may serve, then, as the symbol, not so much of things attained, and Art victorious, as of things that are always to be attained, and of Art striving and undeterred. In this way it may serve, too, as in some sort the emblem of Leighton's own ideals, and of his whole career. His artistic temper was throughout, one of endless energy, endless determination; with a dash of that finer dissatisfaction which is always seeking out new embodiments, under all difficulties, of Man's pursuit, in a difficult, and often an unbeautiful world, of Truth and Beauty. Above all, he was a consummate draughtsman, and as Francisco Pacheco, the father-in-law of Velasquez, wrote in his "Arte de la Pintura" (1649): "Drawing is the life and soul of painting; drawing, especially outline, is the hardest; nay, the Art has, strictly speaking, no other difficulty. Without drawing painting is nothing but a vulgar craft; those who neglect it are b.a.s.t.a.r.ds of the Art, mere daubers and blotchers."

[Ill.u.s.tration: STUDY FOR "THE RETURN OF PERSEPHONE"]

[Ill.u.s.tration: STUDY FOR "PERSEPHONE"]

CHAPTER VII

MURAL DECORATION, SCULPTURE, AND ILl.u.s.tRATION

The drawings of Lord Leighton deserve special consideration. The famous _Lemon Tree_ was made at Capri in the Spring of 1859; it is work that no Pre-Raphaelite could have finished more minutely, yet it has nothing "niggling" in its treatment. In a conversation[10] Lord Leighton is said to have referred to the many days spent upon the production of this study--dwelling specially on the difficulty he experienced in finding again and again each separate leaf in the perspective of the confused branches, as morning after morning he returned at sunrise to continue the work. The drawing of each leaf reveals the close observation which ultimately recorded its particular individuality. You feel that as a shepherd knows his sheep to call each by its name, so the artist must have become familiar with every separate leaf and twig before he had completed his task. The whole is broad and simple, and scarcely suggests the enormous patience which must have been needed to carry out the self-imposed toil. Nothing is shirked, nothing is scamped; from the stem to the outermost leaf, every part in succession reveals equal interest, and yet the whole is not without that larger quality which brings it together in a harmonious whole, so that it is as much the study of a tree as the study of each separate item that composes it.

The _Byzantine Well-head_ is another notable instance of similar labour devoted to an architectural subject; this was evidently a favourite with its author; for during his life it hung close by his bed in the simple chamber of his otherwise sumptuous home, a room devoid of luxury and almost ascetic in its appointments.[11]

The great ma.s.s of studies, on brown paper chiefly, which he had carefully preserved, were purchased by the Fine Art Society, and some two hundred and fifty were exhibited at their gallery in December, 1896, and a selection in facsimile has been published in sumptuous form. In a prefatory note to the catalogue of these studies Mr. S. Pepys c.o.c.kerell says: "It is seldom that we are privileged to watch at ease the workings of another's mind, but these drawings, the intimate record of a long life-time, offer an unusually good opportunity. One might call them the confessions of an artist; and anyone who wants to know what Leighton was really like, has only to use his eyes. One thing, at any rate, no one can fail to see, viz., that he had the qualities which result in industry. Whatever success he achieved was only gained after desperate labour. It is curious that while he had the reputation for working with ease, he considered himself to have no facility for anything, whether for art, for writing, or for speaking. I recollect his once saying: 'Thank Heaven, I was never clever at anything,' for he believed with Sir Joshua, that everything is granted to well-deserved labour."

The landscape studies in oil (of which a list almost complete will be found in Appendix II.), show equal observation and sympathetic perception of the beauty of colour, as well as of the beauty of form. The truth of these carefully recorded impressions of scenery was no less patent than the masterly "selection" which had set itself to depict all that seemed of value, and escaped at once the photographic imitation of one school, and the evasion of detail of another. They all preserve a certain cla.s.sic repose, without violence to topographical accuracy, or painter-like intention.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STUDY FOR THE CEILING OF A MUSIC-ROOM]