Leighton Part 1

Leighton.

by A. Lys Baldry.

It is true that a definite connection can almost always be traced between the temperament of an artist and the work that he produces.

One of the first things that must be taken into account in any study of his achievement is the manner of his training during the most impressionable years of his boyhood. Youthful a.s.sociations and surroundings must obviously have a very real influence upon the direction in which any man develops in after life, and much of his later success or failure must depend upon the kind of cultivation that is given at the outset to his natural tastes and instinctive preferences. Everything which helps to define his personality, or to shape his character, has an actual bearing upon his ultimate efficiency as a producer, and counts for something in the building up of his scheme of active existence; the discipline of a judicious up-bringing puts his temperament under the control of his intelligence, and by pointing the way in which he can best apply his powers, saves him from wasting his energies in unprofitable experiment. He starts his career with a knowledge of himself, and with confidence in his personal qualifications for the profession he has chosen; and this confidence enables him to use his individuality not only to his own advantage, but for the benefit of other men as well.

It would not be easy to find a better instance of this connection between the artist's personality and the character of his performance than is afforded by the life and practice of Lord Leighton, nor one which marks more definitely the effect produced by early a.s.sociations and training. Indeed, to understand his art at all, it is necessary to trace from his childhood the sequence of events by which the trend of his aesthetic convictions was determined, and to follow, step by step, the evolution of that creed in which he retained, to the end, the fullest and most absolute faith. He was no opportunist in art matters, momentary fashions did not affect him, and he did not yield to the temptation, which many artists are unable to resist, to make experiments in unaccustomed directions; what he once believed he believed always, and neither his catholicity of taste, nor his generous toleration of methods of practice quite opposed to his own, had any effect upon the consistency of his effort. What he conceived to be his mission he fulfilled to the utmost, and there is no plainer proof of his strength than the firmness of his adherence to the course which he had decided at the outset was the one he ought to follow.

PLATE II.--THE SYRACUSAN BRIDE

(The plate represents the centre portion of the picture, now in the possession of Mr. Mildmay, M.P., at Ivybridge)

A typical example of the artist's earlier manner--characteristically suave in line arrangement and dignified in effect--this picture shows well how he could manage the intricacies of an elaborate composition.

The decorative beauty of the whole design and the grace of individual figures can be sincerely admired.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE II.--THE SYRACUSAN BRIDE]

Leighton does not seem to have owed to heredity any of his particular gifts as an artist. His father and grandfather were both medical men, and, during several generations preceding his birth, no member of his family appears to have possessed more than an ordinary degree of taste in art matters. Yet the desire for the pictorial expression of his ideas was one of the first of his childish inclinations; and in 1839, before he was ten years old--he was born at Scarborough on December 3, 1830--this desire had become so strong that his parents began seriously to consider whether it ought not to be accepted by them as determining the profession which he was eventually to follow. Their final decision on the subject was postponed for some years longer, for they felt the need for caution lest his powers should prove to be insufficient to justify them in consenting that he should become a professional artist.

But meanwhile his father, himself a man of culture and a lover of the cla.s.sics, determined that the boy should receive a good general education, and that, though art teaching was not to be denied to him, it should be one only of the subjects in which he was to be trained.

So for the next four or five years his work was very judiciously varied. In 1840 he had gone with his parents to Rome, and during the two years he remained there he had regular drawing-lessons from Signor Meli. Then came a year spent partly at Dresden and partly at Berlin, which gave him further opportunities for art study, a short stay during 1843 at a school at Frankfort, and another move, in 1844, to Florence.

This wandering life under his father's guidance was of no small advantage to him, for it not only offered him chances of becoming acquainted with various types of art, but enabled him to acquire that command of languages which was of so much service to him in his after career. It gave him, too, a wide experience of people and things such as comes seldom enough to a lad of his age, and had undoubtedly a very valuable influence upon his mental development.

It was in Florence that the question whether he was or was not to be an artist was finally decided. His father sought the advice of Hiram Powers, the American sculptor, to whom he showed examples of the boy's work and asked whether he should "make him an artist." When Powers declared that Nature had done that already, and, in answer to further questioning as to young Leighton's chances of success, said that he would become as eminent as he pleased, the parental doubts and hesitation came to an end. Immediate steps were taken to give him a grounding in the rudiments of the profession which opened up to him such brilliant prospects. His general education still went on, but he was allowed time for special study, and not only entered the Accademia delle Belle Arti at Florence, but also set to work to study anatomy under Zanetti at the hospital in that city; and on these lines his training was continued for some little while.

When he left Florence it was to return to his school at Frankfort, where he remained till he was nearly seventeen, and then he spent a year in the Stadtlesches Inst.i.tut there. He moved next to Brussels, where he came in contact with Wiertz and Gallait, and then for a few months to Paris, to worship at the shrine of Ingres and Ary Scheffer.

But during this period his art work was carried on without the systematic direction of any master, and though on his travels he had picked up much useful knowledge, and had acquired sufficient confidence in himself to attempt two or three pictures of some importance, he felt at last the need for real discipline. So at the end of 1849 he left Paris, and returned to Frankfort to put himself under the rigid rule of Steinle, a master from whom he knew that he would receive just the drilling which was necessary to bring his somewhat errant youthful fancies under proper control.

Steinle was an artist who had little sympathy with those redundancies of style which were at that time characteristic of the Florentine school. He was a believer in severity of manner, in formality and strict simplicity, and that Leighton should have chosen him as the one man from whom he desired to receive tuition is proof enough that the young artist was fully conscious of the deficiencies in his own early performance. With this consciousness to spur him on it can well be imagined that the two years he spent with Steinle were not wasted; he worked hard, and if he had to unlearn much that he had learned before, he acquired thereby a sounder judgment of the relative value of different forms of practice, and added largely to his knowledge of technical processes. He had, during his earlier wanderings from place to place, seen and studied many phases of art, and he had gathered impressions with what was, perhaps, rather dangerous facility; to bring this ma.s.s of oddly a.s.sorted information into proper shape, and to sift out from it what had real value, was a task in which he needed the a.s.sistance of a disciplinarian with high ideals and firm convictions.

He had full confidence in Steinle's judgment, and though his own aesthetic creed was even then too clearly defined to be changed in essentials by the asceticism of his master, he responded readily to the suggestions of a man who could show him plainly just where the extravagances of this creed required to be curbed, and how what was best in it could most fitly be developed.

He left Frankfort in the autumn of 1852 and went to live at Rome; and soon after he had settled there he commenced the picture which was destined, on its appearance at the Royal Academy in 1855, to put him instantly among the most prominent of the artists of his time. In this picture--"Cimabue's Madonna carried in Procession through the Streets of Florence"--he not only summarised all his previous experience, but forecasted what was to be his artistic direction during the rest of his life. Though he had painted other canvases before, and exhibited them at Frankfort, it was with this one that his career as an artist of admitted distinction really began. It introduced him dramatically to the British public; it was bought by Queen Victoria--a fact which immediately advertised its importance to art lovers in this country--and it amply justified the hopes and expectations as to his future, which had been formed by his many friends abroad and by the judges who had had opportunities of estimating the value of his student work. This was the picture which Thackeray had seen in progress at Rome, and which, by the impression it made upon him, induced him to tell Millais that he had come across "a versatile young dog who will run you hard for the presidentship one day"--a much-quoted prophecy of which we have had since the complete fulfilment.

PLATE III.--GATHERING CITRONS

(In the possession of Mr. Mildmay, M.P.)

Few of Leighton's paintings of Eastern subjects ill.u.s.trate better than this one the certainty and precision of his draughtsmanship and his power of dealing with architectural details. But this "Old Damascus--Jews' Quarter"--as it was called when it was first exhibited in 1874--is much more than a simple study of architecture; it sums up many of the artist's best qualities as a craftsman and a shrewd observer of Nature.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE III.--GATHERING CITRONS]

But in an a.n.a.lysis of Leighton's art this famous composition claims a place of even greater importance than in the historical summary of his life's work. That it has faults in draughtsmanship, and that in certain details its composition is open to criticism, can be frankly admitted; these defects, however, are but what might have been expected in so ambitious an effort by an artist whose years did not number more than four-and-twenty, and who necessarily lacked that comprehensive grasp of executive processes which comes only with long experience and exhaustive practice in the mechanism of painting. When the circ.u.mstances of its production are taken into account it must always rank as one of the most triumphant demonstrations of youthful genius which have ever been recorded. That its reception at the 1855 Academy was really enthusiastic can well be understood; it must have come as a welcome surprise to the people who were growing impatient of the atmosphere of mediocrity by which at that period nearly the whole of British art was pervaded.

Now, the significance of such an example of Leighton's early achievement is made more emphatic by comparison with the long series of his later works. At twenty-four the Italian influence was strong upon him, and the impressions of his boyhood, modified but not effaced by the teaching of Steinle, had still power to control his artistic intelligence. The triviality of Italian art, its love of detail, and its seeking after superficialities of expression, did not appeal to him, but in its sumptuousness and sensuous charm he found something with which he could fully sympathise. In yielding to this sympathy, however, he was kept by his fastidious taste and innate love of refinement from running to extremes. He worked in the Italian spirit, but the spirit was that of the older masters rather than that of the modern men, and even then it underwent a kind of trans.m.u.tation in his mind. For the greater qualities of the picture were not simply the outcome of his imitation of the mannerisms of the school to which at that time he belonged by a.s.sociation, rather were they due to his personal conception of the functions which the imaginative painter was called upon to fulfil--to an independent belief which was capable of being a.s.serted in many ways. This belief, formed in his early manhood, persisted, indeed, in all its essentials to the end of his days, and was as surely evidenced in his later cla.s.sicism as in the first few examples of his Italian adaptations.

It was founded upon the idea that a work of art to be really great must be rightly decorative, that whatever the pictorial motive chosen, it must be treated as the basis of a studied arrangement of form and colour, and must be brought as near to perfection of design as is possible by the exercise of all the devices of craftsmanship. Leighton undoubtedly saw in decoration the only permissible application of painting, but he saw also that decoration could be made much more than a narrow and unreal convention, and that so far from hampering the artist with high ideals, it offered him the greatest opportunities of satisfying his aspirations. He appreciated, too, the fact that the most exquisite naturalism could be attained in every part of a picture which was designed purely to express an ideal fancy. Therefore, he did not hesitate to select, for many of his most exactly reasoned compositions, subjects which had either an historical allusion, or which ill.u.s.trated some myth or legend. He was so sure of the principle of his art that he did not fear that in telling the story, and in embroidering it with a wealth of minutely perfected detail, he would lose the vitality or the purity of his decoration.

To this confidence was due emphatically both the power and the charm of the Cimabue picture. The subject, in itself merely episodical, was one capable of just that refinement of design, and balance of colour, which the decorator who is adequately conscious of his responsibility regards as indispensable; and Leighton, spurred to emulation by the n.o.ble examples of decorative painting with which he had been familiar from his childhood, and endowed with a just appreciation of his own great gifts, had no hesitation in attempting to turn this incident from art history into a painting which would be an avowal of all the articles of his aesthetic creed, and a profession of the faith to which he had sworn allegiance. It is characteristic of his courage that he should have chosen to make in this manner his first appearance in an English exhibition; a man of less independence would probably have hesitated to stake so much upon a piece of work which, by the very frankness of its revelation of the artist's intention to go his own way, was quite as likely to excite opposition as to be received with approval. But it was no part of his scheme of existence to tout for popularity by coming down to a lower level, and he valued consistency more than the adulation of the public.

Indeed, by his very next picture, "The Triumph of Music," which was exhibited in 1856, he brought himself into conflict with the critics and students of what was accepted as correct art. "The Triumph of Music" represented Orpheus playing a violin to Pluto and Proserpine, and the combination of figures from a cla.s.sic story with an instrument invented only in the Middle Ages was resented by every one who did not understand, or did not sympathise with the artist's decorative and symbolical intention. But in this instance also he was following the lead of the great Italian masters, who had provided him with many precedents for such a pictorial combination; and it is quite probable that he knew beforehand what would be the effect upon a modern public of his attempt to give new life to an ancient tradition. At least, he proved that he was quite ready to go to all necessary lengths in his advocacy of freedom of practice, and showed that he was not likely to enrol himself among the conventionalists and the followers of the mid-Victorian fashion.

PLATE IV.--CLYTEMNESTRA

(At Leighton House, Kensington)

The strength and statuesque dignity of this figure are not less remarkable than the power with which the subject as a whole is suggested. The picture has a wonderful degree of dramatic effect, and is especially impressive in its reticence and scholarly restraint. The admirable drawing of the draperies should be particularly noted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE IV.--CLYTEMNESTRA]

This picture was painted in Paris, whither he had gone in the autumn of 1855. He made that city his headquarters for some two years during which he worked a.s.siduously, and found many friends among the leaders of French art. In 1858 he stayed for a time in London, and by coming in contact with some of the younger painters, who were then contributing an important chapter to our art history--with men like Millais, Rossetti, and Holman Hunt--he obtained a closer insight into certain artistic movements of which, while abroad, he had probably heard but the faintest echoes. By this time the Pre-Raphaelite rebellion had produced its effect and was not in need of his support, but it may fairly be a.s.sumed that, if the need had arisen, he would have been on the side of those who were fighting for the emanc.i.p.ation of British art.

In the following year he was again in Italy, and during the spring he worked in Capri; it was there that he executed that marvellous drawing of the "Lemon Tree," which has always, and with justice, been counted among his masterpieces; but in 1860 he decided to settle in London, and established himself in Orme Square, Bayswater. Life in London did not, however, mean that his excursions to other countries were to be abandoned, he continued regularly to spend some months in each year in travel abroad, and he visited in succession Spain, Damascus, Egypt, and other parts of the East, besides renewing his acquaintance with many places which he had seen before. These wanderings were always productive; they added much to his stock of material, and the results of them are embodied in a number of his pictures, as well as in that long series of open air sketches which show how sensitive he was to the beauty of nature, and how delicately he could interpret her moods.

PLATE V.--THE BATH OF PSYCHE

(At the Tate Gallery, London)

One of the most fascinating of Leighton's cla.s.sic compositions. It was painted six years before his death, and represents perfectly the art of his later period, when his powers had fully matured and he had acquired complete control over refinements of practice. Exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1890. Purchased by the Chantrey Trustees in 1890.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE V.--THE BATH OF PSYCHE]

Four years after Leighton became a British artist, by residence as well as by birth, he was elected an a.s.sociate of the Royal Academy. In this same year, 1864, he exhibited a picture, "Golden Hours," which is notable as one of the most successful examples of his Italian manner.

But though the memories of his youth were still powerful, and had, even at that date, an influence upon his art, there was a definite change coming over his practice. Whether this change was due to closer contact with the traditions of English painting, or simply to the inevitable maturing of his convictions as he drew near to middle age, it is hard to say; but certainly as years went on he inclined more and more away from the sumptuousness of Italy, towards the purer and less emotional dignity of Greece. He sought more persistently for the cla.s.sic atmosphere, his idealism became more severe, and his decoration more reticent, and he turned more frequently for his subjects to the Greek myths. As an ill.u.s.tration of his new view, it is interesting to compare his "Syracusan Bride leading Wild Animals for Sacrifice to the Temple of Diana," exhibited in 1866, with the "Cimabue's Madonna," by which his reputation had been established eleven years before. Both are processional compositions of large size, both have the same sort of decorative intention; but while there is in the first some kind of story, and some attempt to realise the atmosphere of a particular period of history, in the second there is little more than a purely fanciful pattern of forms and colours, which is interesting solely on account of its beauty. A similar comparison might be made between the "Dante going forth into Exile," which belongs to the same year as the "Golden Hours," and the "Venus Disrobing for the Bath" of 1867, or the "Helios and Rhodes," "Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon," and "Daedalus and Icarus," of 1869. In this latter year he exhibited also his diploma picture, "St. Jerome in the Desert"--as he had been elected a Royal Academician in 1868--but this, a study of strong action, and vehemently dramatic in effect, is neither Italian nor cla.s.sic, and belongs really to a cla.s.s of art into which he only occasionally digressed. As time went on the statuesque repose of his canvases increased, and the cla.s.sic severity became perceptible even when he treated subjects which had no Grecian allusion. It is quite apparent in his large picture of "Hercules Wrestling with Death for the Body of Alcestis" (1871), though in this there is no lack of vigorous movement; it gave a particular charm to his conception of the exquisite "Summer Moon" (1872), perhaps the most perfect work he ever produced; and it is felt most of all in the vast composition, "The Daphnephoria," which, exhibited in 1876, rounds off significantly that important decade in his career which opened with the "Syracusan Bride."

Henceforth Leighton must be counted among the many artists of distinction who have, in this country, striven a.s.siduously to keep alive the Greek tradition. He never sank into a mere pictorial archaeologist, and rarely tried to produce those cold and lifeless reconstructions of ancient life which are too often put forth by painters who depend for their inspiration upon book-learning and museum study rather than imagination. But the beauty of Greek art, its strength and delicacy, its dignity and ideal grace, absorbed him as they did Fred Walker and Albert Moore, and, like these two British masters, he allowed its influence to determine the way in which the whole of his painting was treated. Even in such pictures as "The Slinger," an Egyptian subject, or "Gathering Citrons; a Court in Damascus," which was one of the results of his Eastern travel, both of which belong to this period, he made no pretence of avoiding, for the sake of what may be called local exactness, the antique preconception; both are as evidently statuesque in design, and cla.s.sic in manner, as any of his Grecian fantasies; and, to take another instance, it is instructive to note how, in his "n.o.ble Lady of Venice," a subject which seemingly demanded a purely Italian quality, the sumptuousness of effect has been refined and purified by a kind of simplicity of statement borrowed obviously from antique art.

It is curious, however, that in the first important piece of sculpture for which he was responsible, the "Athlete Struggling with a Python,"

which was at the Academy in 1877, he should have avoided almost entirely any hint of Greek spirit. This statue is essentially Italian, both in its general design and in its details of modelling. It has none of the firmness of line, and little of the largeness of method, which are so decisively characteristic of antique sculpture, and owes plainly more to Donatello than to Phidias. Yet it has great and distinguished merits, and can be placed in the company of the few great things which have been produced in this branch of art during modern times. As an anatomical study it is most convincing, for it reveals an astonishingly complete knowledge of the construction of the human form, and is exceedingly true in its realisation of muscular action. Perhaps the chief objection that can be urged against it as a work of art is that it records an impossibility--a snake of the size represented would be more than a match for a man even with the fine physique of the athlete, and the ending of such a struggle, the difficulty of which the statue hardly suggests, would be prompt and disastrous. But Leighton's fine craftsmanship has made even an impossibility seem credible, and his work must not be condemned because it involves an error in natural history.

He exhibited another large statue, "The Sluggard," in 1886, which, like the "Athlete Struggling with a Python," has found a permanent home in the Tate Gallery. It is again a study of action which, if less violent than that of the earlier figure, is still vigorous enough to show how well the artist understood anatomy; and it is again Italian rather than Greek. It is also open to criticism because there is an apparent contradiction between the suggestion of the t.i.tle and the physical character of the "Sluggard." This well knit, muscular youth, stretching himself in an att.i.tude of graceful freedom, could have lived no slothful life. Activity and the capacity for strong exertion are evident in every line, and his condition is too good to have been obtained without exercises which the sleepy, sluggish man would not have cared to perform. The t.i.tle, indeed, is unfortunate because it implies an intention on the artist's part to ill.u.s.trate a particular motive which he has failed to express, though what he has actually given us is artistically admirable and full of n.o.ble beauty.