YEAR BY YEAR--1855 TO 1864
The Academy of forty years ago was very different from that we know
to-day. It was held in the left wing of the National Gallery, and had
not nearly so much space at its disposal as it has in its present
quarters at Burlington House. The exhibition of 1855 contained few
pictures, compared with the multitudinous items of the present shows.
Generally speaking, the exhibition was of a heavier, more Georgian
aspect, in spite of certain Pre-Raphaelite experiments and other signs
of the coming of a younger generation. Sir Charles Eastlake was
President. Professor Hart was delivering lectures to its students, full
of academic, respectable intelligence, if little more; lectures which
those who are curious may find reported in full in the "Athenæum" of
that time.
More interesting was the appearance of Mr. Ruskin as commentator on the
pictures of the Academy in this year, the first in which he issued his
characteristic "Academy Notes." His long, and, all things considered,
remarkably appreciative criticism of the _Cimabue's Madonna_ we discuss
elsewhere (p. 103). Of another picture of Italy by a very different
painter, which was considered a masterpiece by some critics, we find him
speaking in terms of monition: "Is it altogether too late to warn him
that he is fast becoming nothing more than an Academician?" The one
picture of the year, according to Mr. Ruskin, was the _Rescue_, by
Millais. "It is the only great picture exhibited this year," he writes,
"but this is very great." For the rest, _A Scene from As You Like It_,
by Maclise; another Shakespearean subject, the inevitable _Lear and
Cordelia_, by Herbert; and a _Beatrice_ by the then President, and we
have recalled everything that served to give the Academy of that year
its distinction in the eyes of contemporary critics. Sir Edwin Landseer,
who to the outer world was the one great fact in the art of the time,
does not appear to have exhibited in 1855.
Looking back now to that date, what one discerns chiefly is the
emergence of the Pre-Raphaelites from the more conventional multitude
that were taking up the artistic traditions of the first half of the
century. Millais, Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and their associates, count to
us, to-day, as the representatives of an earlier generation; in 1855
they still stood for all that was daring, unprecedented, and adventurous
in their art.
This newcomer, with his _Cimabue's Madonna_ in a new style, puzzled the
critics considerably. They did not know quite how to allot him in their
casual division of contemporary schools. "Landseer and Maclise we know;
and Millais and Holman Hunt; but who is Leighton?" was the tenor of
their commentary.
Meanwhile an event of great significance to English Art in this year was
happening--an exhibition of English pictures in Paris, the first of its
kind. This beginning of such international exchanges was important; it
has led up to many striking modifications of both English and French
schools since that date. It is curious that it should coincide with the
awakening to certain other foreign influences: that of the early Italian
school upon the Pre-Raphaelites, and that of the later Italian,
popularly known as "the classic school," upon Leighton and Mr. G. F.
Watts.
Of this exhibition of English pictures, which was held in the Avenue
Montaigne, M. Ernest Chesneau, a critic very sympathetic to English art,
tells us, in his admirable book on the "English School of Painting,"
that "for the French it was a revelation of a style and a school of the
very existence of which they had hitherto had no idea; and whether owing
to its novelty, or the surprise it occasioned, or, indeed, to its real
merit, whatever may have been the true cause, most certain it is that
the English, until then little thought of and almost unknown abroad,
obtained in France a great success."
M. Chesneau, in going on to account further for the great impression
made by the English painters in Paris, attributes it largely to the
_singularity_ which, for foreign eyes, marks their work. It is curious,
indeed, that French critics, and M. Chesneau among them, really admire
this singularity, which they count distinctively British. They look for
it in our pictures, and if they do not find it--as in the work of
Leighton--they feel aggrieved.
British eccentricity, whether thinking its way with the aid of genius
into "Pre-Raphaelitism," or now again, with the aid of extreme
cleverness and talent, into certain cruder forms of "impressionism," is
sure of its effect. But an art like Leighton's, whose aim is beauty and
not eccentricity, is apt to be slighted by both French and English
critics, with some notable exceptions. Not all its grace, its classic
quality, its beauty of line and distinction of treatment, avail it, when
it comes into conflict with doctrinaire theories on the one hand, and a
love for mere sensationalism on the other.
[Illustration: THE DEAD ROMEO
A PENCIL STUDY]
The success of his picture at the Academy, and the incidental
lionizing of a season, did not tempt the artist to stay long in London,
and he went to Paris, where he settled himself in a studio and proceeded
to complete his _Triumph of Music_, and other pictures begun in Rome.
By this time the painter's method might seem assured, but Paris was
still able to add something to his style, with the aid of such masters
as Fleury. English critics, who expected _The Triumph of Music_ to
sustain the reputation won by _Cimabue's Madonna_, were
disappointed--partly because Orpheus was represented as playing a
violin, in place of the traditional lyre. To those who will examine and
compare them more carefully, there is no such discrepancy. _The Triumph
of Music: Orpheus by the power of his Art redeems his wife from Hades_,
which is every whit as distinctive a performance as the _Cimabue's
Madonna_ (as indeed it was conceived and painted largely under the same
conditions), was nevertheless not a popular success. Certainly, it
marks, as clearly as anything can, the sense of colour, the sense of
form, the draughtsmanship, the immensely cultured eye and hand, first
discovered to the English critics by its predecessor. It was sold after
the painter's death.
Of certain other works painted in 1856, 1857, and 1858, some of which
never found their way to the Academy, little need be said. To this
period belong two pictures painted in Paris, the one, _Pan_ under a
fig-tree, with a quotation from Keats's "Endymion":
"O thou, to whom
Broad-leaved fig-trees even now foredoom
Their ripened heritage,"
and the other, a pendant to it, _A Nymph and Cupid_.
_Salome, the Daughter of Herodias_, painted in 1857, but apparently not
exhibited at the Academy, represents a small full-length figure in white
drapery, with her arms above her head, which is crowned with flowers;
behind her stands a female musician. Another, shown in 1858 at the Royal
Academy, and again in the 1897 retrospective exhibition, was first
entitled _The Fisherman and Syren_, and afterwards _The Mermaid_; it is
a composition of two small full-length figures, a mermaid clasping a
fisherman round the neck. The subject is taken from a ballad by Goethe:
"Half drew she him,
Half sunk he in,
And never more was seen."
In the same year was a painting inspired by "Romeo and Juliet," entitled
_Count Paris, accompanied by Friar Laurence, comes to the house of the
Capulets to claim his bride; he finds Juliet stretched, apparently
lifeless, on the bed_. The picture shows, in addition to the figures
named in its former title, the father and mother of Juliet bending over
their daughter's body, and through an opening beyond numerous figures at
the foot of the staircase.
The latter year marked the painter's return to London, where he entered
more actively into its artistic life than he had done hitherto, and made
closer acquaintance with the Pre-Raphaelites, who were already entering
upon their second and maturer stage. To take Rossetti: it was in 1856
that he made those five notable designs to illustrate "Poems by Alfred
Tennyson," which Moxon and Co. published in the following year; an event
that, for the first time, really introduced him to the public at large.
To 1857, again, belongs Rossetti's _Blue Closet_ and _Damsel of the
Sangrael_, both painted for Mr. W. Morris. And in 1857 and 1858, the
famous and hapless distemper pictures on the walls of the Union Debating
Society's room at Oxford, were engaging Rossetti and his associates,
including Burne-Jones, William Morris, Mr. Val. Prinsep, Mr. Arthur
Hughes, and Mr. Spencer Stanhope.
[Illustration: A PENCIL STUDY]
It was in the summer of 1858, Mr. F. G. Stephens tells us, that the
original Hogarth Club was founded, of which the two Rossettis were
prominent instigators,--one of the most notable of the many protestant
societies that have sprung up at different times from a slightly
anti-Academic bias. It is interesting to find that Leighton's famous
_Lemon Tree_ drawing in silverpoint was exhibited here. The Hogarth Club
held its meetings at 178, Piccadilly, in the first instance; removed
afterwards to 6, Waterloo Place, Pall Mall, and finally dissolved, in
1861, after existing for four seasons.
To speak of other painters more or less associated with Rossetti and his
school, Mr. Holman Hunt, whose _Light of the World_ had greatly struck
Paris in 1855, exhibited his _Scapegoat_ at the Academy of 1856, a
picture which called from Mr. Ruskin immense praise, and a
characteristic protest: "I pray him to paint a few pictures with less
feeling in them, and more handling." Of Millais we have already spoken.
In 1856 he exhibited _The Child of the Regiment_, _Peace Concluded_, and
_Autumn Leaves_.
In 1859 Leighton showed three pictures at the Academy. One, _A Roman
Lady_ (then called _La Nanna_), a half-length black-haired figure,
facing the spectator, in Italian costume; another, now called _Nanna_,
then entitled _Pavonia_, a half-length figure of a girl in Italian
costume, with peacock's feathers in the background; and _Sunny Hours_,
which seems to have escaped record so far. The same year saw another of
his pictures, _Samson and Delilah_, exhibited at Suffolk Street.
We must not pass by the famous _Study of a Lemon Tree_ (now at Oxford),
mentioned above, without quoting the praise by Mr. Ruskin, which made it
famous. Mr. Ruskin couples it with another drawing, both of which we
have been fortunately able to reproduce in our pages. These "two perfect
early drawings," he writes, "are of _A Lemon Tree_, and another of the
same date, of _A Byzantine Well_, which determine for you without
appeal, the question respecting necessity of delineation as the first
skill of a painter. Of all our present masters Sir Frederic Leighton
delights most in softly-blended colours, and his ideal of beauty is more
nearly that of Correggio than any seen since Correggio's time. But you
see by what precision of terminal outline he at first restrained, and
exalted, his gift of beautiful _vaghezza_." The _Lemon Tree_ study, let
us add, was drawn at Capri in the spring of 1859. Here, and elsewhere in
the South of Europe, whither the artist returned, escaping from London
at every opportunity, many other notable studies and drawings were made
during this period. Some of these were employed long since for the
backgrounds of pictures familiar to us all. Others, faithful studies of
nature, small oil and water-colour drawings, chiefly landscape, were
scarce known to the general public during the painter's life, but were
eagerly competed for at the sale of his pictures in July, 1896.
The little picture of _Capri at Sunrise_ was hung in the Academy of
1860, the painter's only contribution of that year. In the year
following, we find another small picture of Capri, together with five
others, some of which played their part in winning for the artist his
wider recognition.
[Illustration: A LEMON TREE
A PENCIL STUDY]
[Illustration: BYZANTINE WELL HEAD
A PENCIL STUDY]
Meanwhile, the artist was drawing his London ties closer. In 1860 he
took up his abode at 2, Orme Square, where he continued to reside until
he built his famous house in Holland Park Road, some years later. His
art did not for this reason become more like London, or more infected
with that British singularity which some critics would seem to demand.
On the contrary, Italy and the South, the glow of colour, the perfection
of form, the plastic exquisiteness, which mark for us his mature
performances, and which follow after classic ideals, were more and more
clearly to be discerned in the remarkable cycle of pictures associated
with this part of his career.
In 1861 he painted portraits of his sister, _Mrs. Sutherland Orr_, and
of _Mr. John Hanson Walker_, the former shown at the Academy, where also
hung _Paolo e Francesca_, _A Dream_, _Lieder ohne Worte_, _J. A.--a
Study_, and _Capri--Paganos_. Rossetti, writing of this exhibition,
says: "Leighton might, as you say, have made a burst had not his
pictures been ill-placed mostly--indeed, one of them (the only very good
one, _Lieder ohne Worte_) is the only instance of very striking
unfairness in the place."[2] In 1862 there were no fewer than six of the
artist's pictures at the May exhibition of the Academy: the _Odalisque_,
a very popular work, shows a draped female figure, in a very
Leightonesque pose, with her arm above her head, leaning against a wall
by the water. She holds a peacock's feather screen in her left hand,
while a swan in the water at her feet cranes its head upwards towards
her; _Michael Angelo nursing his dying Servant_, a group of two
three-quarter length figures; the servant reclining in an armchair with
his head resting against the shoulder of Michael Angelo--a fairly
powerful but somewhat academic version of the incident--which looks at
first glance like the work of a not very important "old master;" _The
Star of Bethlehem_, showing one of the Magi on the terrace of his house
looking at the strange star in the East, while below are indications of
a revel he has just left. _Duett_, _Sisters_, _Sea Echoes_, and _Rustic
Music_, also belong to this year.
In 1863 he showed _Eucharis_, a half-length figure of a white-robed
girl, with a basket of fruit on her head; _Jezebel and Ahab_; _A
Cross-bow Man_; and _A Girl Feeding Peacocks_; with these we complete
the list of his work as an outsider.
[Illustration: GOLDEN HOURS (1864)]