The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton Volume I Part 8

[Sidenote: Pebble III.]

[Sidenote: August 21, Sat.u.r.day.]

[Sidenote: I make a reflection,]

[Sidenote: and feel grateful.]

"I am sitting at my window in the inn (hotel, I'll trouble you!) at Meran. For the first time since I left Innsbruck I have leisure again to take up my pen. As I look back on my journey through the Tyrol, so far as it goes, I am forcibly struck with the reflection that my enjoyment of it has been much keener this time than ever it was before; this increased enjoyment has not, I feel, arisen from any external or advent.i.tious circ.u.mstances; last time that I was in this lovely country, I contemplated it with ease and comfort from the rumble of our own carriage; this time I have jolted through it under all the disadvantages attendant on an _Eilwagen_ and indifferent weather; it has arisen in the greater development of my artistic sensibilities, in my sharpened perception of the charms of nature, which discloses to me now a thousand beauties that found no echo in me when I saw them last. I congratulate myself on this reflection. If any man should be constantly penetrated with grat.i.tude for a gift bestowed on him, it is the artist who has realised as his share a genuine love for nature; for his enjoyment, if he puts his gift to usury, increases with the days of his life.

[Sidenote: I get drunk with the antic.i.p.ation of Italy,]

[Sidenote: and spout a parable.]

"Another circ.u.mstance, which has greatly augmented my relish of the Tyrol, is that, at every step, it a.s.sumes more and more the character of my darling Italy; I have watched with fond anxiety every little token that whispered of the south; the gently purpling tints that steal gradually over the distant hills, as one advances towards the land of the amaranthine Apennines, the slow but steadily progressive change of vegetation, the gaunt and ragged fir giving way by degrees to the encroachment of a richer and more gently rustling shade, the anxiously watched gradations, the climax at last; the walnut, first, 'few and far between,' but warmly welcome, with its cl.u.s.tering leaves of juicy green; the chestnut, with its long, graceful, dark-hued foliage; the vine, again, no longer, as in the north, tied stiffly to a row of sticks (like a regiment of gooseberry bushes), but luxurious, wildly spreading, gracefully trained along rows of outward-slanting, basket-like trellis-work, and wreathed here and there by a pious hand up a roadside image of the Crucifixion in ill.u.s.tration of the words of Christ: '_I_ am the true vine.' Now, too, the dark striped, portly pumpkins, with their gorgeous flame-like flowers, begin to appear, sometimes drowsily lolling under the tremulous shade of the mantling vines, sometimes basking with half-closed eyes down the sunscorched lizard-haunted walls, sometimes trained across from house to house, hanging like Chinese lamps over the heads of the pa.s.sers by.

Presently, a _fig-tree_--two--three--more--plenty! A cypress--and, by Jove! look at that terrace of stately, heavy-laden citron and orange trees! Nothing is wanting now but the olive. How could I pa.s.s by such dear old friends without loitering a little among them? A faithful lover, I return, after six years of longing absence, to the home of her of my inward heart; I hurry along, I have already crossed the garden gate. I breathe the air she breathes, I see from afar the bower where she dwells; but as I hasten along the well-known path, a thousand reminiscences of her arise from every object around me, and cling to me, and throw a gentle net across my faltering step, and whisper softly to my dream-wrapt brain--I am spellbound--I linger, even in my impatience.

"I must not forget the excessively picturesque appearance of all the towns and villages south of Innsbruck; long, narrow, tortuous streets, lined on each side with never-ceasing vistas of arcades, and enclosed by houses of most fancifully artistic irregularity; as one pa.s.ses along the vaulted galleries the eye is constantly caught by some picturesque object; either the peasants, as they stroll along in their divers costumes, or the many-coloured, richly piled fruit stalls that every now and then fill the arches, or, through an open door, the endless depth of vaulted pa.s.sages and fantastic staircases and irregular inward courts and yards, offering to the artist's eye a play of lights and shades and mysterious, dreamy half-tints that might shame even a Rembrandt or an Ostade. As the exterior of all the houses is (with the exception, of course, of the ornaments) scrupulously white, the streets, narrow as they are, reflecting, by the luminous nature of their local tint, the light of day into the remotest corner, have a most cheerful aspect.

"Of the Tyrolese themselves, three qualities seem to me to characterise them, qualities which go well hand in hand with, and, I think it is not fanciful to say, are in great measure a key to, their well-known frankness and open-hearted honesty. I mean Piety, which shines out amongst them in many little things, a love for the art, which with them is, in fact, an outward manifestation of piety, and which is sufficiently displayed by the numberless scriptural subjects, painted or in relief, which adorn the cottages of the poorest peasants, and, last not least, a love for flowers (in other words, for nature), which is written in the lovely cl.u.s.ters of flowers which stand in many-hued array on the window-sills of every dwelling. The works of all the really great artists display that love for flowers.

Raphael did not consider it 'niggling,' as some of our broad-handling moderns would call it, to group humble daisies round the feet of his divine representation of the Mother of Christ. I notice that _two plants_, especially, produce a beautiful effect, both of form and colour, against the cool grey walls: the spreading, dropping, graceful _carnation_, with its bluish leaves and crimson flowers, and the slender, anthered, thousand-blossomed _oleander_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STUDY OF A BRANCH OF FIG TREE, 1856 Leighton House Collection]

[Ill.u.s.tration: STUDY OF BRAMBLE, 1856 Leighton House Collection]

[Sidenote: Pebble IV.]

[Sidenote: Statues in Innsbruck.]

[Sidenote: I take on,]

[Sidenote: and lay on,]

[Sidenote: but bottle it up again.]

"One of the sights in Innsbruck has left on me a deep and, I hope, a lasting impression: the bronze statues in the Franciscan church; they are the finest specimens of German mediaeval sculpture that I ever saw, and grew on me as I gazed at them in a manner which I hardly ever felt before; their great merit consists in combining in the most astounding manner the most consummate knowledge of the art with all the simplicity of nature and the most striking individuality (that first of artistic qualities), and exhibiting at the same time the most elaborate finish in the details, with greatest possible breadth and grandeur of general ma.s.ses; this quality is particularly conspicuous amongst the women, three, especially, standing side by side, show, by three perfect examples, the whole secret of ornamental economy; the one, whose dress is ornamented with all the richness of which a luxurious imagination and an unparalleled power of execution were capable, recovers its simplicity of outline and ma.s.s by having a tightly fitting body and sleeve and a skirt of moderate amplitude; the second, whose ornaments, though richly, are more broadly disposed, retains its balance by a slightly increased amplitude of drapery; while the third, whose dress is altogether without embroidery, acquires a corresponding effect by large, loose sleeves and richly folded skirt, and two large plaits hanging down her back. What an opportunity this would be, backed by these giants of breathing bronze, to make an indignant descent on some paltry and muddle-headed moderns, who don't know how to discriminate between that kind of finish which proceeds from the love of a smooth surface, and makes the artist equally careful of his pumps and of his pictures, and that other kind of minuteness which is the beautiful fruit of a refined love for nature, and proceeds from a feeling of piety towards the mother of art, and who complacently call 'niggling,' a quality above the appreciation of their _breadth-mad_ brains; who, in their art-made-easy system of 'idealising' (forsooth), look for artistic 'beauty' in a facial angle of so and so much. What with the _Greeks_ was an _abstract of_ MAN, and very appropriately applicable in the cases of demi-G.o.ds (that the ancients _could_, and _did_, 'en tems et lieu,' individualise, may be sufficiently seen in their admirable portraits), becomes with _them_ an absurdly misapplied _average of mankind_, not _a_ man, or _men_. _The leading feature in Nature is a_ MANIFOLD INDIVIDUALITY, AN ENDLESS VARIETY; _she is like a diamond, that glances with a thousand hues_. 'Indeed!' I hear them contemptuously sneering, 'you don't seem to be aware, sir, that ideal beauty is the great _centre_ of all these _extreme_ varieties, and the only thing worthy of a great artist's attention.' 'Well, gentlemen,'

say _I_, 'without inconsistency, you can't get out of the way of the following mouthful: there are (perhaps you will allow) three elementary colours, which in different combinations produce every variety of hue; _but_, the great _centre_ of these three _extremely_ various colours is _grey, non-colour ... the ideal of a bit of colouring, "the only thing worthy of the attention of a great colourist" is a picture with no colour in it at all_.' However, Messrs. the Generalisists and _Apollinisists_ 'have every reason to congratulate themselves on the extensive circulation of their views, for their _ideal_' is visible in every haircutter's window. Never mind, I must contain myself--but the rod is in pickle!

[Sidenote: Pebble V.]

[Sidenote: Meran.]

"A glorious amphitheatre of lofty mountains! On one side rugged, sternly rising, crenelated, grey, snow-strewn; on the other, dreamy, far outspreading, gently vanishing, southward luring, softly glowing, wrapt in tints of loveliest azure, gradually blending with the silver-fretted sky. A spreading, fertile gushing valley. Down the sunny, swelling slopes, across the embosomed plain, an endless, curling, wreathing flood of gold-green vines, foaming and eddying with purple grapes. Through the verdant waves, like rushes in a stream, the Indian corn raises its slender form and feathered head in long array.

Beneath, outstretched at ease, the pumpkin winks and yawns. At the foot of a steep-fronted, purpling rock, skirting the glowing vineyards, a foaming mountain stream, emerald and silver. Along the heights, nestling in verdure, rise thickly scattered, castellated villas, looking, with their bright, white walls, like smiles on the face of the earth. An epitome of what is rich and joyous and unfettered in landscape. The Alpha and Omega of all that is charming in the Tyrol. MERAN!

"I can say no more for it.

"To my mind, it is inferior to Italy only in one respect: it is wanting in that glowing, strongly marked individuality, that earnest beauty, that 'charm that is in melancholy,' which fascinates so powerfully in the land of wine and oil.

[Sidenote: Pebble VI.]

[Sidenote: Italy!]

[Sidenote: I "realise," as the Americans say,]

[Sidenote: and find reason to think that I am a queer party.]

"To be able to say that, on returning after long years to a country whose image memory has, during the whole of that time, fondled with all the partiality of ardent attachment, one has found one's best expectations realised, is, in this world of disappointments and frustrated expectations, indeed a rare thing; but to find imagination _surpa.s.sed_ by reality is rarer still; yet it is my case now that I once more breathe the air and tread the soil of Italy. For this, I feel more grateful than I can say; for to have been disappointed in _these_ hopes would have been to me the greatest of miseries; as it is, my enjoyment is a double one: that which is occasioned by the positive, intrinsic beauty of what I see, and that, not less great, of recalling at the same time a happy, long-dwelt-on past. This I have more particularly experienced since my arrival in Verona; and here a queer feature in my queer idiosyncrasy obtrudes itself to notice, _i.e._ the extraordinary dominion exercised over me by the senses of smell and hearing! That I do labour under these peculiarities I always knew, but to what a ludicrous extent, I did not find out till, on arriving here (Verona), I was suddenly seized by a gust of a thousand smells and a din of a thousand sounds, some always remembered, others long-forgotten, suddenly rising up again to my memory. I was spellbound, the veil of the past was torn up, I was fairly carried back against the stream of time. Ridiculous as it may sound, my enjoyment of Italy, independently, of course, of the art (which is an extraordinary tissue of reality and illusion), would be very imperfect without this combination of trifles. One thing, I think, must affect every one agreeably; I mean the exquisitely humorous cries of the vendors in the thoroughfares and market-places; who could hear and not remember the loud, expostulatory shriek with which the one dwells on the excellencies of his handkerchiefs, the argumentative and facetious tone in which another infers that comfort is not possible without a supply of his matches, that urgent wail with which a third deplores that man should have so little appreciation of his baked apples, the muddy, half-suffocated tenor with which a fourth proclaims his water-melons, or the rabid, piercing soprano which seems to warn the public that 'if those violets are not bought pretty quick, there will soon be none to buy'?"

[Sidenote: Pebble VII.]

[Sidenote: Verona.]

"I do not think there exists anywhere a more powerfully and fantastically individual town than Verona; it is to Italy what Nuremburg is to Germany; but it is a transfiguration of Nuremburg; in point of wildly picturesque variety it defies description and surpa.s.ses expectation; it is saturated with art; wherever one turns, the eye is struck by some beautiful remnant of the taste--that was; of that glowing, sterling feeling for art, which spread itself over everything, and enn.o.bled whatever it touched. Hardly a house that cannot boast of a sculptured archway, or some such token of ancient splendour; not a church, even the most insignificant, but is crowded with old paintings in oil and fresco, few of which are bad, some very good, a few excellent, but _all_ in a far higher _tone of feeling_ than nine-tenths of the shallow, papery daubs with which the nineteenth century covers its carcase of steam engines. No wonder--they are all scriptural or apocryphal subjects, and were all painted with an ardent belief in the faith to which they all owe their existence; from thence arose, amongst other excellencies, a certain naf, ingenuously childlike treatment of the miraculous, which, combined with the manly dignity of consummate art, gives them an indescribable charm, which nothing can replace. Now--with us, at least, of the cold belief--men throw really eminent talents--_to the dogs_. But, for us Protestant artists, things are made much worse than they in any way need be, by the total rejection of pictures and statuary in our churches. Now, three centuries back, in the first ebullition of reformatory fanaticism, such a practice was not only comprehensible, but even a natural and necessary consequence and token of their total disavowal of everything approaching to the Romish form of worship; but its continuance at present amongst us is, not only contrary to the spirit of the Anglican Church, which after all, when compared to Lutheranism and Calvinism, is a _conservative_ one, but is founded on arguments altogether untenable with any degree of consistency; for if, as we are told, pictures and statues distract the attention and produce a worldly frame of mind, if it be true indeed that works of _high art_ (for, of course, no others are here taken into consideration), than which surely nothing is more calculated to raise the tone of the mind and prepare it for the reception of elevated impressions, have indeed so pernicious an effect, then, it is evident, by the same argument, the beauties of architecture, the eldest of the sister arts, must be equally rejected; at the sight of a Gothic church, that offspring of Christianity, we must shrug our shoulders and say with pious aversion: 'Vanitas vanitatum!' But the Church of England has not gone as far as that; indeed, great attention is paid to our Church's architecture; is there no inconsistency here?

Or does the Church, terrified by the example of Romish image-worship, fear a similar evil amongst us, whose belief is so infinitely more circ.u.mscribed than that of Rome? Or is she so tender of admitting symbols into her bosom, she, whose corner-stone is a symbol: the Last Supper?

"To return to Verona.

[Sidenote: Pebble VIII.]

[Sidenote: The Veronese love flowers,]

[Sidenote: and have good legs.]

"As Gamba, owing to the time which my letter took in reaching him, was not able to meet me at the time appointed, I remained two days at Verona, days to which I shall always look back with unmixed pleasure.

I indulged, this time (the more that I knew the town already), in the luxury of _not_ 'sight-seeing,' but strolled about the whole town in every direction, dropping into churches, staring at tombs and palaces and piazzas and pictures, just as if rolled past me in the ever-varying panorama. I was struck, in the Tyrol, with the profusion of flowers everywhere displayed; but here I see far more, and those, too, more artistically distributed; they rise in double and treble tiers on, in, and about the gracefully curved balconies, and a.s.sert their sway wherever human ingenuity makes it possible to place a flower-pot, and in a great many other places besides; creepers wreathe from window to window, and vines actually springing from holes in the walls, with no visible root or origin at all, spread their graceful mantle over the walls of crumbling palaces. Of the Veronese themselves, I cannot say that they are a handsome race; the women especially, though they have a great deal of character in their features, are generally far from good-looking. Amongst the peasants I saw some very fine men; they have, some of them, very good legs, slender and well shaped as a Donatello or a Ghiberti.

[Sidenote: Thursday, August 26.]

[Sidenote: Gamba.]

"On Thursday Gamba came, just as I was giving him up in a high state of despair and mystification. We hurried at once by Padua to Venice, where I found your letter.

[Sidenote: I look back and feel ashamed,]

[Sidenote: and make a clumsy excuse.]

"As I look through what I have written, before sending it off to you, I feel, painfully, that my style is clumsy, stuttering, incoherent; that I am wordy, without saying enough; that I am overfree in my use of fanciful epithets, without giving an adequate idea of the suggestive beauty of what I see; that I am sometimes almost mawkish, without saying half I feel; that I am incorrigibly slovenly and forgetful; that I can't write, that I can't spell. In answer to all this, I can only answer by referring to a little premonitory observation at the foot of my first page, _i.e. Quality of Pebbles not warranted_.