The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton Volume I Part 14

FRED LEIGHTON.

Please remember me most kindly to your wife.

_Translation._] FRANKFURT AM MAIN, _August 6, 1854_.

MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,--You have heaped coals of fire upon my head, for I have not answered your last dear note, brought me by Andre, and now I have received by Miss Farquhar the lovely study of Vincenzo's head, which you so kindly wish to present to me. I am almost dumfounded to find that you could believe I was angry with you because you have not written me for so long, and that you believe that the indignation had been ignored in my last note. That, dear friend, was a complete delusion, for there is nothing to which I am more partial than to artists' letters, and nothing to which I am more insensible than to such flattering praise as you lavish upon me, while I know only too well how unfortunately little I have deserved it. In earnest, dear friend, call me no more master, but rather regard me as your true and sincere friend, who only out of friendship for you and love of art, far removed from despicable dissimulation, faithfully shares with you his opinions and experience, and never regards them as the p.r.o.nouncements of an oracle. I know very well what a difference there is between the description of a work of art and the sight of it; the first, at best, only gives one side, one part, whilst seeing places before our eyes the whole soul of the artist, from all sides, and then much is made mutually clear which in the former case appeared either not understood or misunderstood. Miss Farquhar could not tell me enough about you and your work, and greatly kindled my curiosity and desire to be in your _atelier_ for once; I was only sorry that she had nothing to tell me about Gamba; indeed, on the whole, she knew nothing about him. If I am to express my thoughts of the very beautiful head of Vincenzo, it seems to me that Leighton ought to guard against striving for excessive fineness, for works of art can only be produced by quite the contrary method. A certain roughness must bring out fineness, but if everything is fine, nothing remains fine, &c. But believe, though this head half displeases me, especially on account of these theories, I think it beautiful and masterly in drawing, and am consequently proud to possess it, as I am of all that I have from your hand. I thank you a thousand times for this fresh proof of your friendship. About this place, let me be silent; you are right to say that art is my refuge, and that I find in it my compensation for much that goes ill here and everywhere; I must also not allow this asylum to be profaned by the trifles of the very human things that surround us in this world.

Greet from me Rome, Gamba, Cornelius, and all the friends who remember me; and to yourself, dear friend, heartfelt greetings from your true and unchanging friend,

EDW. STEINLE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "VINCENZO, THE PRETTIEST AND WICKEDEST BOY IN ROME." 1854 Leighton House Collection]

Before leaving Rome Leighton received the following characteristic letter from Mr. Cartwright, one of his truest life-long friends:--

CARLSBAD, _July 11, 1854_.

MY DEAR LEIGHTON,--You will be astonished to see a letter from me. I can a.s.sure you that I have often thought of you, and meant to indite you an epistle in the hope of eliciting a reply full of Roman tale from you, and lately, when through Papeleu I heard of your great canva.s.s labors, my yearning got a new twinge which at last has been pinched into expression by the start at Pollock's resuscitation. I had heard of his death in Paris and had mourned his fate most sincerely, when the first man whom I met tramping health out of the hot water of Carlsbad was Pollock himself. He is himself again every inch of him; indeed a most wonderful recovery; and, after deep and valorous potations of hot water, we take long walks in the hills. He goes from here to Marienbad and Prague, and means to be back in Rome by the end of October. And I also mean to return there. Like a true drunkard, I can't forswear my bottle, and I must have another pull at it. We shall be there, I hope, in the beginning of October, and I hope, my dear Leighton, that you will not grudge me the pleasure of letting me have a few lines, so that I may know whether you will be there in the winter and what are the changes in Rome since my time. Are the Sartorises to be there next winter, and where are they now? Pray answer me this, as I particularly wish to know where they are. I have heard that there were such crowds of strangers at Rome last winter that quarters were not to be had; and for this reason I wish to be there early. Do you happen to know what is the price of the floors in the house on the Pincio which was built by Bystrom the sculptor? Next to the Trinita, immediately after the sculptor's studio, there is a small house inhabited when I was last in Rome by some French officers (at least a sentinel was at the door) and years ago by Mrs. Sartoris. Pollock tells me it is now to be let. Would you be kind enough to give me any information you can about it. It is a house I have often coveted on account of the view.

I beg your pardon for my coolness; I hope you will bear kindly with it; if I can do anything for you in Paris, command me: but anyhow pray write to me, if only a few lines, for in my heart I wish to have some news about you and old Rome. The other day I saw at the Louvre our old friend the very questionable _Vittoria Colonna_ which was at Minardis. It was for Exhibition there in the Gallerie d'Apollon: what the picture is I cannot pretend to p.r.o.nounce, but I do not like it: it is a picture in which I have no confidence. I think that if not a made picture, it is at all events a tame one.

This year there was no Salon as it has been put off till next year's great Exhibition. Robert Fleury has sold a picture to the Luxembourg which is not so good as his former ones; but the man who I think is the most _marked_ one of the day is Conture. Excuse my sc.r.a.p, and pray take pity on my longing and write me, were it only _a line_. I should be grievously disappointed were you to refuse me the pleasure. I shall be _here till the 7th August_; until the _25th August_, after that date letters will find me Frankfurt Poste Restante; and after that in Paris Poste Restante. If you write here, put Carlsbad--Bohmen--and in a corner, _Austria_. And now farewell; with a real ... I am longing for a letter. The kindest regards to my Caffe Greco and other friends.--Yours most sincerely,

W.C. CARTWRIGHT.[28]

After his stay at the Bagni di Lucca, in the summer of 1854, Leighton went to Frankfort, Venice, and to Florence, returning to Rome in October.

In the following letter to Steinle are sentences it might be well to print in finest gold, for the benefit of students who try to run before they walk, who aim at the freedom and glorious inevitability of a Velasquez touch without taking the pains to equip themselves worthily to enter the lists with the giants; not realising that skipping over the underpinning, necessary in creating any work of art, must result in the shakiest of edifices. The sentence refers to the criticism in Steinle's letter of August 6, 1854, on the drawing of "Vincenzo" (called by Leighton "the prettiest and wickedest boy in Rome") which Leighton had sent him.

_Translation._] ROME, VIA FELICE 123, _October 22, 1854_.

As I am making a short pause to-day in my work, I cannot employ it better than in writing a letter to you, my very dear Friend. It was a very great comfort to me to see by your last lines that you had not construed my former long silence as a cooling of my friendship and grat.i.tude, and I therefore hope that you will also this time meet me with the same forbearance. You will certainly be interested to hear, my dear Friend, that both my pictures are by this time fairly forward, and I expect to finish them within three months. How much I wish that you could see them here, and that I could put in the finishing touches under your supervision! I would give you an account of my work, but, bless me, what is there to _tell_ about my picture, except that it has given me a fearful amount of trouble, and that in the end one perceives how circ.u.mstantially one has gone to work on the whole matter; the "Cimabue" goes to London and the "Romeo" to Paris. While I am speaking of my works, I take this opportunity to touch gratefully upon your kind remarks about the study head of Vincenzo, and to inform you, however, that my opinion of it takes rather more the form of a question than that of an objection. I have often considered the question of the self-guidance of an artist who is left to his own devices, and it has often struck me how many wander in evil by-paths through an unorganised, may I say _unprogressive_, development of their gifts; and now it seems to me that most of them are wrecked because they maturely study _the object to be attained_, while the _means_ are not considered which should lead to such results. For example, a young man sees a Raphael, a t.i.tian, a Rembrandt, all in their latest manner, and hears people say: See how broad, how full, how round, how masterly!

And the student naturally conceives the wish that he also might produce broad and masterly works, and _so far_ he is right; but from that point he goes aside. He goes home and _strives_ and _strains_ after masterly breadth; he succeeds (apparently), and he is lost. The soap-bubble is quickly blown; he rejoices in its gay colours; it flies up and breaks in the air. And the cause is simple; the true, genuine mastership is not an _acquired quality_ but an _organised result_. As with art itself, so is it also with the individual artist. If we cast an eye over the progress of art-history, we see how the full, conscious, free, has developed itself out of the meagre, timorous, scrupulous, dry. Similarly if we compare the first efforts of the individual with his last, we perceive the same thing: place M. Angelo's "Pinta" beside the decorations of the Sixtine, one of Raphael's works at Perugia beside the "Stanzen," Rembrandt's "Lecon d'anatomie" beside the "Night.w.a.tch," and it will be evident in the most striking manner that not one of these men had risen by means of his talent to full breadth in his youth, or had been in any way studious to do so, but on the contrary that they have attained mastery by natural growth. In order, therefore, to reach the same alt.i.tude, the young artist must proceed in the same manner as his exemplars, and must endeavour so to direct his studies that he, according to his gifts, may achieve a similar result. He who would fill his threshing-floor must not _glean_, but rather he must _sow_ that he may richly harvest; he who would have rare fruits all his life must plant and cherish the tree; even so should the young artist seek to plant a tree the normal fruit of which is called "artistic perfection." You will easily understand how by the application of these maxims my preliminary works go forward rather _timorously_. Entire conscientiousness is now the chief thing to me. I _am laying_ the foundation on which I hope to rely firmly later on; I am ama.s.sing capital and am not yet in enjoyment of the interest. "How many objections to a couple of words?" you will laughingly remark; dear Friend, I must feel myself indeed well equipped before I permit myself to oppose anything against your judgment.

Of Gamba I will say nothing, for he is going to enclose a few lines in this.

I have made a trip to Florence this summer, and again thoroughly enjoyed the art-treasures. I think I have spoken to you of the wall-paintings by Giotto which were discovered two years ago in Santa Croce; one of them, which represents the death of St. Francis, is the literal prototype of the celebrated fres...o...b.. Ghirlandajo (on the same subject) in the Sta. Trinita, and I really prefer it.

Time, eyes, paper fail me, and I must close. I hope that, if you write to me again, you will tell me exactly what you are doing.--Meantime, dear Master, accept the heartfelt greeting of your grateful pupil,

FRED LEIGHTON.

Please remember me most kindly to your wife and to all my friends.

Leighton's eye trouble having become a constant anxiety and hindrance to him, he resolved to consult Graefe, the great German oculist. From Florence, on his return journey, he writes his impressions of Berlin to Steinle. In this letter he repeats again the sense of happiness which he always experienced in Italy.

_Translation._]

FLORENCE, 386 VIA DEL POSSO, _November 13_.

MY VERY DEAR FRIEND AND MASTER,--At last I am able to write to you. In the hurry and bustle of travelling, and even in the short sojourns that I have made here and there, it has been impossible for me to sit quietly down and compose a letter.

Even to my parents I have written this morning for the first time since I left Vienna. But you will readily believe that during this time I have often travelled in thought to Frankfurt in loving remembrance of you, my dear Friend.

Strange things have happened to me since I saw you. I had not even reached Berlin when I was informed by a "jebildeten"

(cultivated) Prussian that Graefe, on whose account exclusively I was travelling to the "geistreichen" (clever) capital, had gone away for an indefinite period; imagine my dismay! Luckily on my arrival I found an old friend who was acquainted with the family of Geheimerath von Graefe, and who found out through them that Graefe must arrive at the Golden Lamb (Leopoldostadt) in Vienna on such and such a day. I met him, and had a consultation at which he examined my eyes with the ophthalmoscope, and told me to be of good cheer, my trouble was certainly obstinate but in no way dangerous, and I might hope for a complete cure. He prescribed me a course for Rome, which consists princ.i.p.ally of local blood-letting and wearing spectacles, and will be very tedious; but I will gladly conform to anything in order to get my eyes back again.

One thing is certain, since I have been in Italy they have been quite markedly better, which I attribute for the most part to the diminution of my hypochondria. Yes, since I have been in Italy I have become a new man; I breathe, my breast throbs higher; heavy clouds have rolled away from me; the sun shines again on my path, and my heart is once more full of youth and love of life; if only you were also here, dear Friend!

But I must tell you something about my German travels, and I will begin with Berlin. There is certainly something special about that town. At the first glance it is somewhat imposing, and the prodigious quant.i.ty of new buildings, which evidently aim at architecture, gives (one may hold one's own opinion as to the taste of the buildings) the appearance of great artistic activity and of a widespread taste for art; but I have since found reason to regard this apparent love of art as something feigned or forced. One gets quite sick of _education_ in Berlin; would you believe that now _every girl_ has to pa.s.s an _examination as governess_?[29] Kaulbach understands the Berliners well; in Raeginski's house a study of a Roman piper hangs in great honour, which he has purchased from the _great master_ on account of a doggerel verse which is written on it in large letters, and runs thus:--

"Upon my travels in Italy, This little boy I found, but he, Although my brush may his form repeat, Remains to my sorrow incomplete."[30]

--W. KAULBACH.

Divine! eh? I knew a counterpart in the Belgian art-world.

When I visited Gallait in Brussels some years ago, before the door stood a ragged, most picturesque Hungarian rat-catcher, who asked me if an artist did not live there. Recently I saw my Slav again, with a violin under his arm, in a window, very finely lithographed, I believe even an "artistes contemporains"; in the corner was "Louis Gallait pinx"; underneath, "Art et Liberte"! Thus do pictures originate!

In Berlin everything is valued extrinsically. One sees that most strikingly in the new Museum. When it is finished, it will be, in proportion to the means of the town in which it stands, the most splendid that I know; moreover, it cannot be denied (unsuitable as a three-quarters Greek building may be on the banks of the Spree) that much in the architecture is even very beautiful. But what is the good of it all? With the exception of some Egyptian antiquities, in all these lavishly gilded and painted rooms there are only _plaster casts_! Yes, and, I must not forget it, the great tea-service of Kaulbach.

A wretched thing, made, moreover, with superfluous productiveness; simple allegory carried out without any fine sense of form, with utter denial of all individuality, and painted--well, of that one would rather say _nothing_; and yet "Kaulbach has the h.e.l.lenic art," &c. &c., and all the rest that is in the papers. One would like to exclaim with Ca.s.sius: "Has it come to this, ye G.o.ds!"

Unfortunately I cannot praise the Cornelian things in the _old_ Museum much either. I must confess they displeased me greatly; when I consider them from a distance in their connection with the building, I find them disproportioned; in a long, very simple colonnade, built on a large scale, I require of a fresco painting that it shall show in form and colour large, quiet, plastic ma.s.ses; instead of that I see here a gay, unquiet, confused _frica.s.see_ of thought and allegory that makes one dizzy; ideas in such profusion that nothing remains with the spectator; he goes away without having received anything; nor is the mental impression plastic. If, however, one goes nearer to see the execution, again one finds nothing pleasing--a constrained, unlovely drawing--positions that could only be attained by complete breaking on the wheel--a general appearance as if the figures had no bones, but muscles made of brick instead. The colour is not much better than Kaulbach's. The end-piece on the right, an allegorical representation of the death of man (or something of the kind), gives the most ordinary and at the same time most awkward sudden impression that I have yet seen.

Cornelius may look at the Vatican in Rome and see if he can find anything like it there. Altogether the once certainly great artist seems to have somewhat deteriorated; the Cartoons at the Campo Santo are not by a long way so good as the design (which I find charming in parts); they are here and there, which greatly surprised me, disgracefully _out of drawing_; and then the theatrical att.i.tudes, conventional clothes, &c.

&c. In the Museum itself there are few pictures of the first rank, but so much the more beautiful are those by masters of the second rank. What a Lippi! what a Basaiti! what a Cos Rosetti! I was entranced; that is art, character, form, colour, all in beautiful harmony. The "Daughter of t.i.tian"

does not deserve its celebrity; it is weak and dull.

But my paper is exhausted, as are also my eyes; I will therefore defer the rest to another letter, and only mention that in Vienna Kuppelwieser, Fuhrich, and Roesner received me like a son of the house, and all sent hearty greetings to you.

Do write to me very soon, dear Friend, and keep in kind remembrance your grateful, devoted pupil,

FRED LEIGHTON.

My address is, Poste Restante, Rome.

Please remember me most kindly to your wife, and generally to all friends.

When tracing the ever-swaying ebb and flow in the tides of joy and sorrow in a life, we come to times which seem to acc.u.mulate in their days the whole strength of feeling and vitality of which a nature is capable; prominent summits that rise triumphant out of the troublous waves, up to which the past existence has seemed to climb, and the memory of which retains a dominating influence in the descent of the future.

"I--h'm--must I say it?--am just as happy as the day is long." So wrote Leighton to his mother when at the age of twenty-three he was spending his days in and about Rome--that wonderful Rome with her world of ghosts, her solemn eventful past skimmed over and made faint by her actual sunlit present. To Leighton that sunlit present became vividly, excitingly alive. Fountains of joy were springing up in the artist-nature, catching as they sprang golden rays from all that is most beautiful in youth's dominions. Leighton writes to Steinle (July 25, 1853): "The remembrance of the beautiful time spent there (Rome) will be riches to me throughout my life; whatever may later befall me, however darkly the sky may cloud over me, there will remain on the horizon of the past the beautiful golden stripe, glowing, indelible; it will smile on me like the soft blush of even."

When, in the late autumn of 1852, he first arrived in Rome, he had just stepped from the position of being one in a family to that of being an independent unit; and, though accompanied by his brother artist, Count Gamba, he felt greatly the loss of what he had left behind--the inspiring companionship of Steinle, compared to which nothing in Rome was worthy to count as an art influence. Obliged to work in a small, inconvenient studio, the only one obtainable--expected friends, whose society he valued, failing him--he felt the want of so much that he could hardly enjoy what he had. In those first days (as we gather from his letters) the Eternal City cast no fresh glamour over his spirit.

Spring came, and the tune changed with the entrancement of Persephone's release in the balmy warmth of the South. The spring air twinkles with sunshine, and the fruit-trees are again alive with gay blossom, of fluttering petal, frail as the soft moth wing; the villa gardens are again bedecked with grand, more solid petalled flowers--brilliant-hued camellias--and later,--the n.o.ble magnolia's ivory white goblets; while the ground is carpeted with violets and varied-hued anemones. All over the wild s.p.a.ces of the Campagna spring up gra.s.ses and lovely unchequered growth, spreading a green and golden fur, bristling in the bright light for miles and miles under a cloudless sky away to the faint blue line of mountains on the horizon.

On one summit--golden in the sunlight--the old town of Subiaco is poised; on nearer slopes--summer haunts of the ancient Roman world, Tivoli, Frascati, Albano: the wastes of budding herbage between checked only here and there by some spectre of old days, some skeleton of a broken archway, some remnant of a ruined wall.

It was on these strange wilds of the Roman Campagna that the life-long friends, Giovanni Costa and Leighton, first met. Here is the description of the delightful scene of their meeting, and of Leighton's previous introduction to Costa's work at the famous Cafe Greco, written by Costa after his friend's death:--

"In the year 1853, the Cafe Greco at Rome was a world-renowned centre of art, a rendezvous for artists of all nationalities, who had flocked to Rome to study the history of art as well as the beauties of nature surrounding the sacred walls of the Eternal City.

"At the Cafe Greco[31] there was a certain waiter, Rafaello, a favourite with all, who had collected an alb.u.m of sketches and water-colours by the most distinguished artists, such as Cornelius, Overbeck, Francais, Benonville, Brouloff, Bocklin, and others, and I felt much flattered when I too was asked to contribute, with the result that I gave him the only water-colour I have ever done in my life. Leighton was also begged by Rafaello to do something for the alb.u.m, and having it in his hands, he saw my work, and asked whose it was. On being told, he advised Rafaello to keep it safely, saying that one day it would be very valuable. When I came later to the Cafe, Rafaello told me how a most accomplished young Englishman, who spoke every language, had seen my water-colour, and all he had said about it. I was very proud of his criticism, and it gave me courage for the rest of my life.

"That same year, in the month of May, the usual artists' picnic took place at Cervara, a farm in the Roman Campagna. There used to be donkey races, and the winner of these was always the hero of the day.

We had halted at Tor de Schiavi, three miles out of Rome, and half the distance to Cervara,[32] for breakfast. Every one had dismounted and tied his beast to a paling, and all were eating merrily.

"Suddenly one of the donkeys kicked over a beehive, and out flew the bees to revenge themselves on the donkeys. There were about a hundred of the poor beasts, but they all unloosed themselves and took to flight, kicking up their heels in the air--all but one little donkey, who was unable to free himself, and so the whole swarm fell upon him.