LORD LEIGHTON'S HOME
If we seek for practical expression of Leighton's sympathy for
decorative art, we may find it most satisfactorily in his own home as it
appeared during his life. Mr. George Aitchison, R.A., designed the whole
house;--even the Arab Hall being largely built from drawings made
specially by him in Moorish Spain. Although the exterior of No. 2,
Holland Park Road has individuality, rather than distinction, it was
within that its special charms were found. One of the first things seen
on entering was a striking bronze statue, "Icarus," by Mr. Alfred
Gilbert; a typical instance of Leighton's generous recognition of
artistic contemporaries.
In earlier pages we spoke of the Arab Hall and its Oriental enchantment.
No attempt to paint the effects of such an interior in words can call it
up half as clearly as the slightest actual drawing. There is a dim dome
above, and a fountain falling into a great black marble basin below;
there are eight little arched windows of stained glass in the dome; and
there are white marble columns, whose bases are green, whose capitals
are carved with rare and curious birds, supporting the arches of the
alcoves. The Cairo lattice-work in the lower arched recesses lets in
only so much of the hot light of midsummer (for it is in summer that one
should see it to appreciate its last charm), as consists with the
coolness, and the quiet, and the perfect Oriental repose, which give
the chamber its spell.
[Illustration: THE HOUSE: THE INNER HALL]
More in what we may call the highway of the house, from entrance hall to
studios, is the large hall, out of which the Arab Hall leads, and from
which the dark oak staircase ascends with walls tiled in blue and white.
Here, on every side, one saw all manner of lovely paintings and
exquisite _bric-à-brac_: a drawing of _The Fontana della Tartarughe in
Rome_ by Leighton's old mentor, Steinle; other bronzes and paintings,
and in full view a huge stuffed peacock, which seemed to have shed some
of its brilliant hues upon its surroundings.
In the drawing-room hung many Corots and Constables, with a superb
Daubigny, and a most tempting example of George Mason,--a picture of a
girl driving calves on a windy hill, amid a perfect embarrassment of
such artistic riches. The famous Corots, a sequence of panels,
representing _Morning_, _Noon_, _Evening_, and _Night_, which cost Lord
Leighton less than 1,000 francs each, were sold for 6,000 guineas for
the four, at Christie's, in July, 1896. Still another small Corot, a
picture of a boat afloat on a still lake, was also in this room. One of
the Constables that hung there is literally historic--for it is the
sketch for that famous _Hay Wain_ which, exhibited in Paris, at once
upset the classical tradition, and gave impetus to the whole modern
school of French landscape. Near it was one of Constable's many pictures
of Hampstead Heath,--simply a bit of dark heath against a sympathetic
sky; but so painted as to be a masterpiece of its kind. These pictures
were but a few of the many artfully disposed things of beauty, born in
older Italy, or newer France, or in our new-old London.
Upon the staircase there were pictures at every turn to make one pause,
step by step, on the way. Sir Joshua Reynolds was represented by an
unfinished canvas of Lord Rockingham, in which the great Burke, in his
minor function of secretary, also figures. Then came G. F. Watts's
earlier portrait of Leighton himself; and here a genuine Tintoretto.
There was the P.R.A.'s famous _Portrait of Captain Burton_; and over a
doorway his early painting of _The Plague at Florence_, with another
early work, _Romeo and Juliet_, one of his very few Shakespearean
pictures.
From the landing whence most of these things were visible, you entered
at once the great studio. Round the upper wall ran a cast of the
Parthenon frieze, and beneath this the wall on one side was riddled and
windowed, as it were, with innumerable framed pictures, small studies of
foreign scenes; so that one looked out in turn upon Italy and the South,
Egypt and the East, or upon an Irish sunset, or a Scottish
mountain-side.
Opposite these, below the great window, were many of the artist's
miniature wax models and studies. Else, the ordinary not unpicturesque
lumber of an artist's studio was conspicuously absent. The secret of
Leighton's despatch and careful ordering of his days, was to be read,
indeed, in every detail of his work-a-day surroundings. Even in a dim
antechamber, with a trellised niche most mysteriously overlooking the
Arab Hall, at one end of the studio, in which the curious visitor might
have expected to find dusty studies, discarded canvases, and other such
æsthetic remnants,--even that was found to contain not lumber, but a
Sebastian del Piombo, a sketch of Sappho by Delacroix, a landscape by
Costa, a Madonna and Child of Sano di Pietro del Piombo.
At the extreme other end of the main studio was the working studio of
glass, built to combat the fogs by procuring whatever vestige of light
Kensington may accord in its most November moods. The last addition to
the building, not long before Lord Leighton's death, was a gallery,
known as "The Music Room," expressly designed to receive his
pictures--mostly gifts from contemporary artists; or, to speak more
accurately, works that had been exchanged for others in a wholly
non-commercial spirit. These included, _Shelling Peas_, by Sir J. E.
Millais, _The Corner of the Studio_, by Sir L. Alma-Tadema, _The
Haystacks_, and _Venus_, by G. F. Watts, and _Chaucer's Dream of Good
Women_, by Sir E. Burne-Jones.
Such was the daily environment of that hard, unceasing, indefatigable
labour which, natural faculty taken for granted, is always the secret of
an artist's extraordinary production. And it was an environment, as one
felt on leaving it for the gray London without, that well accorded with
the radiant painted procession of the figures, classic and other, that
file through Lord Leighton's pictures.