The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton Volume I Part 19

[43] See List of Ill.u.s.trations.

[44] See Appendix, Vol. II.

[45] See letter to Steinle, page 188: "...G.o.d forgive me if I am intolerant; but according to my view an artist must produce his art out of his own heart, or he is none."

[46] "I remember hearing him (Wordsworth) say that 'Goethe's poetry was not inevitable enough.' The remark is striking and true; no line in Goethe, as Goethe said himself, but its maker knew well how it came there. Wordsworth is right; Goethe's poetry is not inevitable; not inevitable enough."--Preface to "Poems of Wordsworth," chosen and edited by Matthew Arnold.

[47] Knowing that Leighton was a frequenter of the Kew Gardens, I asked Sir W. Thiselton Dyer to write me his recollections of him, which he most kindly did in the following letter:--

KEW, _January 11, 1906_.

DEAR MRS. BARRINGTON,--My acquaintance with Lord Leighton was only beginning to ripen into intimacy when he unhappily died.

His somewhat grand seigneur manner at first a little alarmed me; but when I had broken through his reserve, I became, like every one else, much attached to him.

He used often to dine in evening dress at a small table behind a screen at the door of the coffee-room at the Athenaeum. In the corner adjoining this is a round table known as Abraham's Bosom, as it was once frequented by Abraham Hayward. Here, on Royal Society days, we often had a lively scientific party.

Leighton often found it impossible to keep aloof, and joined in the fun.

I found Sir Frederic, as he was called, was well known to our men as a visitor to Kew. He used to drive down in his victoria in the afternoon and take a solitary walk. I only myself came across him once. I had taken some trouble to get a fine show of the old-fashioned Dutch tulips known as Bizards and Byblomen. I found Leighton one day absorbed in the enthusiastic contemplation of them. There were certain combinations of colour which completely fascinated him. I remember that he particularly admired a purplish brown with yellow and a reddish purple with cream-colour. Both were, I think, in the "key" that particularly appealed to him. He was very anxious to have them in his garden in London, and we gave him a little collection, with directions how to grow them. What was the result I never heard.

I then suggested that, as it was a lovely spring day, I should take him a walk. He a.s.sented, and we sent his carriage round to the Lion Gate, nearest to Richmond. I took him through the Queen's Cottage grounds to show him the sheets of wild hyacinth. He admitted their beauty, but remarked that the effect was not pictorial.

That, I think, was Leighton's point of view. With an intense feeling for beauty, he had little or none for Nature pure and simple. His art was essentially selective, and I think he took most pleasure at Kew in the more or less artificial products of the gardener's art. What he sought was subtle effects of form and colour. Personally, I appreciate both ways of treating plants. I am always at war with artists for their undisciplined and mostly incompetent treatment of vegetation: drawing and anatomy are usually defective to an instructed eye, such faults would be intolerable in the figure. Their presence robs me of much pleasure in looking at Burne-Jones' pictures. I imagine he mostly made his plants up out of his head. Ruskin, with all his talk, was both un.o.bservant and careless. Millais, on the other hand, though I am not aware that he ever had any botanical training, by sheer force of insight paints plants in a way to which the most fastidious botanist can take no exception. One can actually botanise in his foreground of "Over the Hills and Far Away," yet there is no loss of general pictorial effect.

The plant drawing of Albert Durer, Holman Hunt, and Alma Tadema, though more studied, is absolutely satisfying to the botanist. Sir Joseph Hooker has always complained that the Royal Academy has never given any encouragement to accurate plant drawing. Yet I have heard Sir William Richmond say that, as a student, he made hundreds of careful studies of plant-form, and that he knew no discipline more profitable. I remember remarking to an Academician that I thought that in this respect the compet.i.tion pictures of the students reached a higher standard than that of the average May Exhibition, and he admitted that that was a possible criticism.

Leighton aimed at beauty by selection and discipline. Millais in his later work looked only to general effect and balance, but as to detail was content to faithfully reproduce, and did not select at all. This explains the admiration which I believe Millais had for Miss North's work. Both produced admirable results, but they were of an essentially different kind, though equally admirable.

But whenever Leighton introduced plant-forms, it was penetrated by his characteristic thoroughness and perfect mastery of what he was about. I am myself a pa.s.sionate admirer of the Gloire-de-Dijon rose. I remember telling Leighton that I did not think that any one had ever painted it with such consummate skill as he had. I am told, and quite believe it, that his pencil studies from plants are as fine as anything that has ever been done.

Leighton rendered us a very great service on one occasion. Miss North's pictures were painted on paper, roughly framed, and simply hung by her on the brick walls of her gallery. They soon began to rapidly deteriorate. I appealed to L. for advice. I was, I confess, astonished to receive from him a full, precise, and business-like report, pointing out exactly what should be done, and who was the proper person to do it. The gallery was to be lined with boarding, the pictures were to be properly framed, cleaned, lightly varnished, and glazed. The report was at once accepted by the office of works, the work was successfully carried out, and no trouble has been experienced since.

In his turn, Leighton sometimes appealed to me. This was notably the case when he was painting his "Persephone," which I frankly told him I thought was the most beautiful picture he had ever painted. He had been in Capri, and had seen on the rocks a blue flower which he wished to introduce into the foreground. We made out what it was, and sent him tracings from plates and sketches from herbarium specimens. These did not satisfy him, and he ultimately sent to Capri for the living plant. He worked hard at it, and, I do not doubt, produced a very beautiful piece of colour.

That year I dined at the Academy. "Persephone" hung over Leighton's chair, and was the subject of one of the few really witty remarks I ever heard in an after-dinner speech. But then the speaker was Lord Justice Bowen.

But his beautiful foreground was all gone. Leighton, and I think he was right, thought it destroyed the balance of his colour scheme, and painted it out. But I have always felt sad to think of the beautiful work that lay buried there.

When he died, we felt very sad at Kew. He had always been so lovable and disinterested. We decided to send some tribute to his funeral, but to avoid what was commonplace. So we sent a large wreath of bay, introducing, in the place of the conventional berries, single snowdrop flowers. The result was dignified and, I think, adequate. At any rate, the Academicians thought so, if, as I have been told, they placed the wreath by the coffin on the hea.r.s.e on its way to St. Paul's.

I walked back with Lord Redesdale, one of Leighton's most intimate friends, who had come up from Batsford to attend.

There was a great gathering at the Athenaeum. I sat next Millais, already himself stricken with death, and whom I never saw again.

I am afraid all this will not be very helpful to you, but my pen ran on to tell you all I could of a good, great, and brave man, whom it was an honour to have known.--Yours always sincerely,

W.C. THISELTON DYER.

CHAPTER IV

WATTS--SUCCESS--FAILURE

1855-1856

It was in the summer of 1855, in consequence of his father having summoned him suddenly back to England, that Leighton first became known as a notable person to the London world. His picture of "Cimabue's Madonna" had preceded him, and gave him an introduction to the art magnates; while the fact that the Queen had bought it of the young and, till then, unknown artist, raised the curiosity of those to whom the intrinsic value of the work was insignificant, compared to its having received this mark of Royal approval. Hanging on the walls of the Academy throughout the season and being much talked about, the picture, combined with the painter's charming personality, won for him at once a prominent position. His friends of the happy Roman days, however, remained the nucleus of his real intimacies. As can be gathered from his letters, he had already in Rome felt general society to be fatiguing and unremunerative, the interest in it never having compensated him for the physical exertion and weariness it entailed.

Health--and a more or less stolid temperament--are requisite in order to combat, with any satisfaction, the wear and tear of late hours, and contact with mere acquaintances and strangers whose personalities carry with them no special interest. Leighton found no pleasure in such intercourse sufficient to overbalance its sterility, for he possessed neither robust health nor much equanimity of temperament.

He could enjoy with ecstasy those things which delighted him, but had little of that even current of patient contentment, the normal condition of those who can tolerate cheerfully--and even with pleasure--the herding in crowds with mere acquaintances. Circ.u.mstances combined in making Leighton's disinclination to indiscriminate visiting often misunderstood. His extreme vitality when in company, his notable gifts as a talker and as a linguist, the high social standing of many of his most intimate friends, naturally gave the impression that he was made for the sort of success which is the aim of many living in the London world. That he never availed himself of all the opportunities that offered themselves was considered by many as a sign of conceit and superciliousness. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. That he was ambitious for Art to take her legitimate position on the platform of the world's highest interests is certain, and that he resented the position which was but too often accorded in England to her earnest votaries, and had a keen discernment in tracing evidences of self-interest and sn.o.bbish proclivities in those who would have patronised him, is no less certain; but that Leighton himself was ever personally otherwise than the most modest of men, all who really knew him can attest. To whatever cla.s.s in society a man or woman might belong, whether a Royal or a quite humble friend--once a friend, Leighton gave of his very best and worthiest. No time or trouble would he spare in such service; though he was too eager a worker, and felt too keenly a responsibility towards his calling for him to allow any moment of his life to be frittered away by claims which were not in his eyes real or of any serious advantage to others.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "CUPID WITH DOVES"

Decorative work with gold background. About 1880]

It was during this summer that he made the personal acquaintance of Ruskin, Holman Hunt, Millais, and Watts. While in London he found a home with his mother's relations, Mr. and Mrs. Nash, in Montagu Square, for whose affectionate kindness he was ever grateful. It was while staying there that Watts and he first met, or rather on the pavement outside the house. Watts recounted how he had ridden one afternoon to Montagu Square, and having asked for Leighton, the artist himself came out to greet him. Watts was much impressed at the time, he said, by the extraordinary amount of vitality and nervous energy which Leighton seemed to possess. This acquaintance thus begun was continued for forty years.[48]

As regarded Art, the supreme interest in the lives of these two famous painters, their relations remained intimate to the end of Leighton's life. Before Leighton definitely settled in London, Watts invited him to show his work in the studios of Little Holland House, which invitation he gratefully accepted. In a letter to his mother Leighton writes: "Watts has been exceedingly amiable to me; the studio is at my disposal if I want to paint there. I am still of opinion that Watts is a most marvellous fellow, and if he had but decent health would whip us all, if he does not already."

It is interesting to trace the influences which developed alike in Leighton and Watts, the feeling for form which in both artists is a.n.a.logous to that of the Greek. Before going to Italy, Watts had studied the perfection in the work of Pheidias in the Elgin Marbles, a perfection rediscovered by Haydon; and a visit to Greece later only confirmed his conviction that the Pheidian school of sculpture made a higher appeal to his artistic sense than did any other. That was "_the indelible seal_" which, in the case of his brother artist, had been stamped on Leighton's artistic nature through the guidance of his master, Steinle. When Watts lived in Italy, from the year 1843 to 1847, he found that it was the work of Orcagna and t.i.tian that appealed most to his imagination, and to his sense of form and colour--Orcagna's great conceptions, which struck notes stranger and more widely suggestive than those dictated and restricted by special religious creeds; t.i.tian, the glorious t.i.tian of the Renaissance, whose sense and modelling had the breadth and bloom of Pheidian art, and whose colour was triumphant in qualities of richness and subtlety combined. The pure beauty in the early religious painters made a much slighter and less personal appeal to Watts during those four years he lived in Italy.

It was in Italy, when a child of twelve, that Leighton drank a deep draught from the fountain-head of mediaeval and modern art; and this established once and for all the high standard towards which he ever aimed. But though his true artistic preferences were aroused at this early age, the full and complete pa.s.sion for his calling was not developed till he met his master some years later in Frankfort.

Belonging to the brotherhood of Nazarenes, the early religious Italian art appealed more strongly than any other to Steinle; and, doubtless, the earnest study Leighton devoted to Duccio, Cimabue, Giotto, Buonfigli, Perugino, and Pinturicchio, and the delight he took in their work, was originally started by Steinle. The following list, which exists in Steinle's handwriting, of the paintings which he wished Leighton specially to study in Florence is evidence of this.

_Translation._]

FLORENCE

_St. Croce._--The choir by Angiolo Gaddi, pupil of Giotto. The chapel on the right by his uncle, Taddeo Gaddi. The altar by Giotto himself, in the sacristy the Taddeo Gaddi, in the refectory the Last Supper, all by Giotto.

_St. Marco._--Outside Fiesole, where particularly should be seen in the cloister-cell and choir-stalls a Last Supper by Ghirlandajo.

_St. Maria Novella._--The choir by Domenico Ghirlandajo, chapel by Giovanni and Filippo Lippi, a Madonna in marble by Benedetto da Majano, the great Madonna of Cimabue. The h.e.l.l and Paradise of Andreas Orcagna. Opposite the court of this chapel grey in grey by Dello and Paul Ucello; from the court into the Capello dei Spagnola, to the left the picture by Taddeo Gaddi; all the rest by Simon Memmi.

_Capella di St. Francesco_, by Dom. Ghirlandajo.

_St. Ambrogio._--Fres...o...b.. Cosimo Rosetti.

_St. Spirito._--Built by Brunelleschi; altar-pieces by Filippo Lippi and Botticelli.

_Al Carmine_, dei Ma.s.sacio's.

_St. Miniato._--Chapel by Aretino Spinello.

_Palazzo Riccardi._--The lovely chapel by Benozzo Gozzoli.

_In the Chapel of the Foundling Hospital._--Beautiful altar-piece by Ghirlandajo.

After visiting Padua, Siena, Perugia, a.s.sisi, however, the pupil became a keen admirer of this early art, independently of any influence other than the inherent beauty, dignity, and purity of the feeling in the works themselves.[49] Moreover, the natural sympathy which Leighton felt for the art of Greece, discovered in this early Italian work records of her influence, and that, in a very striking manner, it was allied to that of the great ancients. In his Academy address of 1887 we find this alluded to in the following pa.s.sage:--

"The production, both in sculpture and painting, of the middle period of the thirteenth century has a character of transition. In painting, the works, for instance, of Cimabue and of Duccio are still impregnated with the Byzantine spirit, and occasionally reveal startling reminiscences of cla.s.sic dignity and power, to which justice is not, I think, sufficiently rendered. In sculpture, the handiwork of Nicolo Pisano is full of the amplitude, the rhythm, and virility of cla.s.sic Art. I see in it, indeed, the tokens of a new life in Art, but little sign of a new artistic form--it is not a dawn; it is an after-glow, strange, belated, and solemn. In the Art of Giotto and the Giottosques, the transformation is fulfilled. It is an art lit up with the spirit of St. Francis, warm with Christian love, pure with Christian purity, simple with Christian humility; it is the fit language of a pious race endowed with an exquisite instinct of the expressiveness of form, as form, but untrained as yet in the knowledge of the concrete facts of the outer world; an art fresh with the dew and tenderness of youth, and yet showing, together with this virginal quality of young life, a simple forcefulness prophetic of the power of its riper day. Within the outline of these general characteristics individuality found sufficient scope."