The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton Volume I Part 21

21 RUE PIGALLE, _Tuesday_.

I have nothing whatever to tell you, except that I have just finished a head of Carlo Perugini (for myself), which is the best thing of the kind I ever did. It has not interfered with my picture, but has stopped up unavoidable gaps. I have got H.

Wilson[54] to teach me the Conture Method--_a fin d'avoir tate a tout_. Conture paints well in spite of his method, which might easily lead to superficial mannerism. The best _dodge_ is to be a devil of a clever fellow.

Will you do me a _great_ favour--for my friend Hebert, to whom I am under great obligations? If you can get me for him _any_ Greek cla.s.sic (if Homer, all the better) in the _same edition_ as my _Brumek's Anacreon_ with _Latin notes_, I shall be much obliged. Hebert wants very much to have any such work.

_Translation._]

21 RUE PIGALLE, PARIS, _Sat.u.r.day, September 29, 1855_.

MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,--At last I find the long-desired opportunity to send you the photographs; our old Gamba has undertaken to convey them to you. How I envy him the pleasure of seeing you again, dear Master! You, on your side, will certainly have great pleasure in seeing your old pupil again.

He is just the same as ever; rather more of a beard, and broader shouldered, but still quite the old Gamba. He will be able to tell you that we have cherished your memory with love and reverence, and are always proud to call ourselves your pupils.

I should like to describe to you what I am painting now, but the subject I have chosen is such an absolute matter of sentiment, that your imagination might well paint something quite different, in comparison with which my picture might subsequently suffer; I would rather wait until I can send you a photograph. It is a picture with only four figures, but life-size. I stand in alarm before the blank canvas. One learns gradually to understand that one really can do nothing.

The photographs in the portofolio with my writing on them are yours; I hope they will please you. You must accept them as a little memento of my Italian hobbledehoy-hood.

Remember me respectfully to Madame Steinle, to my other friends "tante cose."

Keep me in remembrance.--Your grateful pupil,

FRED LEIGHTON.

Again to Steinle he writes:--

PARIS, RUE PIGALLE 21.

No one could sympathise better than I with your melancholy loneliness in the hermitage of Frankfurt; in that air an artist breathes with difficulty; I confess I should be entirely paralysed by the lack of models and other resources in Frankfurt; one all too easily loses sight of the infinite importance of a complete material representation, which is always the special mark of the _artist_; I often see with amazement how even quite clever people behave in this respect.

It has quite a plausible sound if one says (such a fellow as Strauch, for example), "Away with materialism! Pfui! The great artist is he who has the most ideas!" Stop, my little man! do you not feel what a store of artistic cowardice lies behind your words? Ah, behind so broad a shield you can elude all the difficulties of your work! He who has the most _ideas_ is first only as the greatest _poet_ or even _philosopher_! He only is an _artist_ who can _set_ his ideas _forth_. _Art_ means the power to do; undoubtedly the idea is the source, the achieved is art; but an _idea_ completely _embodied_ can no more exist without the _artist_ power than a thousand ideas that are only muddled away by agitated incapacity!

I gladly let myself go on such matters to you, for I know that we are of one mind regarding them, and it does one good to pour out one's heart a little for once.

I hear, with particular interest, that you are painting the little picture of the Madonna that you composed twenty-three years ago in the diligence when you were travelling to Italy; it is a very good thing. I imagine a lovely landscape in the background; an oleander, rich in starry bloom; grey olives and stately cypresses wave in the distance; soft violets nestle on the bank of the cool water, and gaze with earnest eyes out of the whispering gra.s.s. On the still bosom of the stream sleep white blossoms, which have flown down when the winds breathed on the limes, and see, in a secret nook in the shade of the lovely _Himmelsglocken_, the strawberry bed from which the black-eyed John will peep at the treasures. Above, in the branches, many-coloured birds frolic, and chase one another, and flit through the grove, in harmonious, song-rich flight.

And the Madonna! how tenderly and lovingly she looks down upon the two playing children! Have I described your picture?

In order to send it to England (and how delighted I should be to see it) you should, so much I know from personal experience, cause your picture to reach the Royal Academy (without fail) on the first of April; I believe that influence is no use at all, for the Academicians are very autocratic; I will, however, obtain all the information in good time. I, who was even more totally unknown in England than you, have refrained, by the advice of my friends, from applying to _any_ person, and have left my pictures entirely to themselves.

Now I must close this immoderately long letter. It seems not impossible to me that I may pa.s.s through Frankfurt next spring, then we will have a good long gossip together, won't we?

Till then, keep in warm remembrance your English pupil,

FRED LEIGHTON.

It is clear that Paris lacked the charm which Italy had for Leighton.

Parisians have been compared to the Greeks with respect to the peculiarly _fin_ and agile manner in which they can exercise their intellects; and so far Leighton might have been expected to fit in happily and with enjoyment to himself into their life. But though he felt a great respect and admiration for the genuine artistic sense which the French undoubtedly possess as a nation, Leighton, no less as a man than as an artist, was more Greek than is any typical Parisian.

He viewed the beauty of nature from a less circ.u.mscribed standpoint, his emotions were excited with a more ingenuous spontaneity and less from a _parti-pris_ att.i.tude than, as a rule, are those of the French artist. Paris was too artificial to appeal strongly to Leighton's taste. As with the Greeks, grace and charm in the form of living as in Art was a necessity to his well-being; but he found more natural expression of such grace and charm in the unsophisticated Italian than among the artificial and more highly finished manners of the Parisians. We never read of the eager longing to be in France that Leighton's letters show when it was a question of a return to Italy.

Also Paris does not appear to have suited his health. He writes to his mother after living there some weeks:--

21 RUE PIGALLE, _Sunday, 21_.

DEAREST MAMMA,--I observe in a general way that the climate of Paris is very exciting to my nerves--infinitely more than Rome. The life I lead is one of unprecedented regularity and absence of any kind of excess, yet sometimes in the evening, when I have lit my lamp and my fire and sit down to work, I can neither play, nor read, nor draw, nor do anything for five minutes together for sheer restlessness and fidgets. That sleep, too, that used to be the corner-stone of my accomplishments and the pillar of my strength, is not by any means what it was--_non sum qualis eram!_

The Sartoris have not changed their plans more than five or six dozen times since you saw them. They are now staying in the country with the Marquise de l'Aigle, Edward's sister.

They will be here at the beginning of November and stay _three_ months--ooray! Lady Cowley is, I believe, not yet come back. I see a great deal of Herbert Wilson here. He has with him, too, an arch-brick of a friend, a naval captain whom I like most particularly. I am painting his head for practice and for him--he is a fine specimen of an English sailor.

About learning by heart, don't you think it will be a great waste of my very little eyesight to read the same thing over and over again until I know it?

21 RUE PIGALLE, _October 26_.

My health, to return to the eternal refrain, is just what it was. I shall find very little difficulty in giving up coffee or tea after dinner, as I never take either; indeed, of late I have given up wine, beer, gin, and other spirituous liquors as utterly exciting and d.a.m.nable. Nothing makes me sleep as I used except going to bed late, and as I am always either sleepy, tired, or fidgety in the evening, I very seldom get beyond ten o'clock.

Carlo Perugini, whom I saw to-day, sends "tante cose" to his cousin. He is a charming boy, most gentlemanlike, and has that peculiar childlike simplicity which belongs to none but Italians.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SKETCH IN WATER COLOUR FOR TABLEAUX VIVANTS, "THE ECHOES OF h.e.l.lAS."

Leighton House Collection]

Leighton's friendship with Brock and the French sculptor Dalou began in these autumn days of 1855. He also made the acquaintance of Whistler, whose etchings he admired greatly. The work of Jean Francois Millet also delighted him no less than that of Corot.

His sister's diary contains the following notes: "November 25.--We arrived at Paris. Our dear, handsome Fred was here to meet us.

December 1.--Fred comes to see us daily, though sometimes only for five minutes. He is pale and coughs a good deal; it makes us uneasy.

He often comes to dinner. Presents to us on New Year's day. Took me to the Conservatoire. Always generous. We went often to Mrs. Sartoris in the evening."

It was in Paris that Leighton probably first enjoyed to the full the culture of his instincts for the drama. Mr. and Mrs. Sartoris remained in Paris during the winter and spring, and Mr. Henry Greville arrived there on February 28th, 1856.

Extracts from his published diaries give a picture of the _milieu_ in which Leighton's hours of relaxation from work were spent:--

27 RUE DU FAUBOURG ST. HONORe, _Sat.u.r.day, March 1, 1856_.

I left London on Thursday with Flahault and Charles, and after a smooth pa.s.sage slept at Boulogne and came on here yesterday.

After dining _tete-a-tete_ with the excellent doctor (the Hollands dined out), I went to Adelaide Sartoris', where I found Herbert Wilson, Leighton, and other young and good-looking artists, and some ladies whom I did not know, and amongst them Madame Kalergi, a niece of Nesselrode, a tall, large, white-looking woman, who has a reputation for cleverness and a great talent on the pianoforte. This morning I went to Leighton's studio, and saw his drawings, which are full of genius.

_Thursday, March 6._

Heard in the morning that Covent Garden theatre was burnt at seven yesterday morning, and went to announce the event to Mario. In the evening, with Adelaide Sartoris and Leighton, to Ristori's rentree in "Mirrha." She acted more finely than ever, and I was enchanted with her wonderful beauty and cla.s.sic grace: her tenderness, in this part especially, is indescribable. Adelaide Sartoris had never seen her before, and was as much delighted as astonished at the performance.

The audience was in a frenzy of enthusiasm, and yet I do not believe half the people present understood Italian.

_Friday, March 20._

I went last night with Adelaide Sartoris and Leighton to see Ristori in Alfieri's play of "Rosmunda."

In reading it I was convinced I should be bored by so inflated a rhodomontade, and that the part of Rosmunda, being one of unmitigated fury and violence, was unsuited to an actress whose chief merit seemed to consist in her power of delineating the gentler pa.s.sions. I was therefore but little prepared for the wonderful effect she produced upon me and on the audience. The play is horrible and offensive, but her manner of rendering this odious part is nothing short of sublime. Her beauty in the costume of the sixth century is beyond all description, and the manner in which she varies the phases of the same pa.s.sions of hatred and vengeance, and the prodigious power of the whole impersonation, are marvellous. Her acting of the scene in the third act, when she tells Ildevaldo that Amalchilde loves Romalda, is about the best thing I have seen her do; and the last act, in which she murders her rival, and the way in which she seizes her and drags her up the steps, is like a whirlwind sweeping everything before it; too terrible almost to witness, and prevented my sleeping all night.

_Monday, March 24._

In the evening I went (as I generally do) to Adelaide Sartoris', where I found Bickerton Lyons, French, and Leighton. This latter is a singularly gifted youth. Besides his talent for painting and drawing, which is already at twenty-five very remarkable, and likely, if he lives, to place him in the highest rank of modern artists, he appears endowed with an extraordinary facility for anything he attempts to do.

He speaks many foreign languages with remarkable fluency, and almost without accent; he is possessed of much musical intelligence, and on matters connected with the art which he has made his particular study and profession his information is very extensive--and, I am told by others, better able to judge than myself, that this is the case. With all these qualities, natural and acquired, I never saw a more amiable or single-hearted youth.

_Wednesday, March 26._

Went with the Sartoris's, Montfort, and Leighton to the Palais Bourbon to see Morny's pictures--a charming collection. The Emperor had just sent him two beautiful pieces of Beauvais tapestry--marvellous specimens of that manufacture; in return, I suppose, for his speech of the other day, with which his Majesty was highly pleased.