THE ARTIST AND HIS CRITICS
Before closing our record it will be well to quote, as we promised
earlier, some of the contemporary criticism that Sir Frederic's work has
encountered from time to time; and especially the criticism of his
earlier performances, while he was still in the years of his
pre-Academic probation.
As a provocation to criticism, most interesting of all is his picture,
the _Cimabue's Madonna carried in Procession through the Streets of
Florence_, upon which we have already commented. As we may here remind
our readers, it was painted at Rome chiefly, in 1853-4, and was
exhibited at the Academy of 1855. In that year, as good fortune would
have it, Mr. Ruskin issued for the first time, "Notes on some of the
Principal Pictures Exhibited in the Rooms of the Royal Academy." Some
pages of this famous pronouncement are devoted to this very picture, and
we cannot do better than quote freely from a criticism so remarkable.
"This is a very important and very beautiful picture," says Mr. Ruskin.
"It has both sincerity and grace, and is painted on the purest
principles of Venetian art--that is to say, on the calm acceptance of
the whole of nature, small and great, as, in its place, deserving of
faithful rendering. The great secret of the Venetians was their
simplicity. They were great colourists, not because they had peculiar
secrets about oil and colour, but because when they saw a thing red,
they painted it red; and ... when they saw it distinctly, they painted
it distinctly. In all Paul Veronese's pictures, the lace borders of the
table cloths or fringes of the dresses are painted with just as much
care as the faces of the principal figures; and the reader may rest
assured that in all great art it is so. Everything in it is done as well
as it _can_ be done. Thus in the picture before us, in the background is
the Church of San Miniato, strictly accurate in every detail; on the top
of the wall are oleanders and pinks, as carefully painted as the church;
the architecture of the shrine on the wall is well studied from
thirteenth-century Gothic, and painted with as much care as the pinks;
the dresses of the figures, very beautifully designed, are painted with
as much care as the faces: that is to say, all things throughout with as
much care as the painter could bestow. It necessarily follows that what
is most difficult (_i.e._ the faces) should be comparatively the worst
done. But if they are done as well as the painter could do them, it is
all we have to ask; and modern artists are under a wonderful mistake in
thinking that when they have painted faces ill, they make their pictures
more valuable by painting the dresses worse.
"The painting before us has been objected to because it seems broken up
in bits. Precisely the same objection would hold, and in very nearly the
same degree, against the best works of the Venetians. All faithful
colourists' work, in figure-painting, has a look of sharp separation
between part and part.... Although, however, in common with all other
works of its class, it is marked by these sharp divisions, there is no
confusion in its arrangement. The principal figure is nobly principal,
not by extraordinary light, but by its own pure whiteness; and both the
Master and the young Giotto attract full regard by distinction of form
and face. The features of the boy are carefully studied, and are indeed
what, from the existing portraits of him, we know those of Giotto must
have been in his youth. The head of the young girl who wears the garland
of blue flowers is also very sweetly conceived.
"Such are the chief merits of the picture. Its defect is that the equal
care given to the whole of it is not yet _care enough_. I am aware of no
instance of a young painter, who was to be really great, who did not in
his youth paint with intense effort and delicacy of finish. The handling
here is much too broad; and the faces are, in many instances, out of
drawing, and very opaque and feeble in colour. Nor have they in general
the dignity of the countenance of the thirteenth century. The Dante
especially is ill-conceived--far too haughty, and in no wise noble or
thoughtful. It seems to me probable that Mr. Leighton has greatness in
him, but there is no absolute proof of it in this picture; and if he
does not, in succeeding years, paint far better, he will soon lose the
power of painting so well."
To Mr. Ruskin's account, which is sufficient to enable one to realize
the picture in some detail, we may add further the criticism of the
"Athenæum" of May 12th, 1855, which is interesting as showing how the
work affected a contemporary critic of another order. It speaks of Mr.
Leighton as "a young artist who, we believe, has studied in Italy," and
goes on to say: "There can be no question that the picture is one of
great power, although the composition is quaint even to sectarianism;
and though the touch, in parts broad and masterly, is in the lesser
parts of the roughest character." The last clause of the sentence bears
out, it may be perceived, a significant indictment in Mr. Ruskin's
deliverance, which lays stress on a defect that the artist, in his
maturer brush-work, does not show.
Rossetti, writing to his friend William Allingham, May 11th, 1855, says:
"There is a big picture of _Cimabue_, one of his works in procession, by
a new man, living abroad, named Leighton--a huge thing, which the Queen
has bought, which everyone talks of. The R.A.'s have been gasping for
years for someone to back against Hunt and Millais, and here they have
him, a fact that makes some people do the picture injustice in return.
It was _very_ uninteresting to me at first sight; but on looking more at
it, I think there is great richness of arrangement, a quality which,
when _really_ existing, as it does in the best old masters, and perhaps
hitherto in no living man--at any rate English--ranks among the great
qualities.
"But I am not quite sure yet either of this or of the faculty for
colour, which I suspect exists very strongly, but is certainly at
present under a thick veil of paint, owing, I fancy, to too much
continental study. One undoubted excellence it has--facility, without
much neatness or ultra-cleverness in the execution, which is greatly
like that of Paul Veronese; and the colour may mature in future works to
the same resemblance, I fancy. There is much feeling for beauty, too, in
the women. As for purely intellectual qualities, expression, intention,
etc., there is little as yet of them; but I think that in art richness
of arrangement is so nearly allied to these, that where it exists (in an
earnest man) they will probably supervene. However, the choice of
subject, though interesting in a certain way, leaves one quite in the
dark as to what faculty the man may have for representing incident or
passionate emotion. But I believe, as far as this showing goes, that he
possesses qualities which the mass of our artists aim at chiefly, and
only seem to possess. Whether he have those of which neither they nor he
give sign, I cannot tell; but he is said to be only twenty-four years
old. There is something very French in his work, at present, which is
the most disagreeable thing about it; but this I dare say would leave
him if he came to England."[12]
In the year following Leighton's academical _début_, he exhibited a
picture entitled _The Triumph of Music_, which the "Athenæum," hereafter
so sympathetic towards his work, described as "anything but a triumph of
art."
Partly, perhaps, because of the general tone of discouragement in all
the criticisms of this year, the artist did not send in anything to the
Academy of 1857. In 1858 his two pictures--_The Fisherman and the
Syren_, and _Count Paris_, although admirably conceived, and extremely
interesting to us now, received no word of friendly criticism that is
worth recording.
At the Academy of 1859 were exhibited two pictures by him, which served
to reassure at last those critics who had been shaking their heads over
his supposed inability to follow up his first success. We turn to the
"Athenæum" again, to study its gradual conversion from an attitude of
critical distrust to one of critical sympathy:
"Mr. Leighton," says the "Athenæum," "after a temporary eclipse,
struggles again to light. His heads of Italian women this year are
worthy of a young old master: anything more feeling, commanding, or
coldly beautiful, we have not seen for many a day.... This is real
painting, and we cannot but think that a painter who can paint so
powerfully will soon be able to surpass that processional picture of
his,..." _i.e._, the _Cimabue_.
In 1860, the artist, who then entered upon his thirtieth year, exhibited
a small picture, _Capri, Sunrise_, which won great praise for its
successful treatment of Italian landscape under the Scirocco, whose
sulphurous light is cast with evil suggestion upon the white houses and
green vegetation. In paying his tribute to the quality of the picture,
the critic of the "Athenæum" cannot resist, however, the old cry of
great expectations. For the effect of the _Cimabue's Madonna_ had
aroused critics to regard the painter as one who would continue the
legend of the great historical schools, and carry on the traditions of
the so-called grand style. But the critic proposes, the creator
disposes: the artist went his own way, following still his own ideals.
In 1861, some rather warm discussion raged over two of the artist's
contributions to the Royal Academy, which appeared in its catalogue as
Nos. 399 and 550, and which, it was said, had been deliberately slighted
by the hanging committee. In later years, Leighton must sometimes have
smiled when he heard (as from his position he must needs have,) the
annual plaint of the "skied." It is to the "Art Journal," whose
criticisms, when they had to do with the new and rising schools, used to
be always entertaining, if often provoking, in those days, that we turn
for a contemporary account of these things, rather than to any other
source. The critic having premised, with a delightful and convincing air
of "I told you so!" that his first effort (the inevitable _Cimabue's
Madonna_) having exhausted the poor artist, "he has been coming down the
ladder of fame ever since," continues in characteristic tones: "Instead
of being hung too high, the _Dream_, had it been properly hung, would
have been displayed upon the ceiling." The picture, according to this
authority, consisted only of a questionable combination of the "lower
forms of mere decorative ornamentation," and was in fact, "not so much a
picture as a very clever treatment for the centre of a ceiling." So much
for what was really the first clear sign of the artist's delightful
decorative faculty.
It is clear from various evidences of the feeling of the critics about
Leighton at this time, that they had begun to look upon him as one whose
ideals were frivolous, and not seriously minded, or weighted with the
true British substantiality of the old Academy tradition. In the very
next year, the artist, by the chances of his own temperamental
many-sided delight in life and art, did something to reassure his
admonitors once more. No. 217 at the Royal Academy of 1862 was his
picture, _The Star of Bethlehem_, which, with some natural and not
unfair deductions, won considerable praise from the critic last quoted.
In this painting, which shows curiously the mingled academic and natural
quality of the artist, the critic found profound incompatibilities of
conception and technique; and next year, the same critic was stirred to
exclaim,--"The pictures which of all others give most trouble and
anxiety to the critic are perhaps those of Mr. Millais and Mr.
Leighton,"--a very suggestive conjunction of names, let us add.
It was probably the same critic, who speaking of the _Dante at Verona_,
in 1864, said gravely, "The promise given by the _Cimabue_ here reaches
fruition."
Writing in 1863, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, a critic whom it is interesting to
be able to cite, said of two of the artist's pictures of that year, the
_Girl feeding Peacocks_ and the _Girl with a Basket of Fruit_, they
belong "to that class of art in which Mr. Leighton shines--the art of
luxurious exquisiteness; beauty, for beauty's sake; colour, light, form,
choice details, for their own sake, or for beauty's."
In the same year, Mr. Rossetti spoke of the young artist as the one
"British painter of special faculty who has come forward with the most
decided novelty of aim"--since, that is, the new development of art
under the little band of Pre-Raphaelites,--with which Mr. W. M. Rossetti
was himself so closely associated.
By way of contrast, we may cite the "Art Journal" of 1865, which
provides a most extraordinary criticism of _David_, of that year. "We
would venture to ask," says this ingenious critic, "why the divine
psalmist has so small a brain? Within this skull there is not compass
for the poet's thoughts to range. We state as a physiological fact, that
a head so small, with a brow so receding, could not have belonged to any
man who has made himself conspicuous in the world's history. Again,
descending to mere matter of costume, there cannot be a doubt that the
purple mantle flung on the psalmist's shoulders is wholly wanting in
study of detail, and constitutes a blot on the landscape. Barring these
oversights, the picture possesses merits."
At this period we hear the first critical murmurs against the artist's
very deliberately chosen method of flesh-painting. In 1867, speaking of
the _Venus Disrobing_, the "Art Journal" critic says: "According to the
manner, not to say the mannerism, of the artist, it has a pale silvery
hue, not as white as marble, not so life-glowing as flesh." With this we
may compare, for the comparison is instructive, the "Athenæum," whose
notice is more sympathetic. The figure of the goddess it describes as
"all rosy white, ... admirably drawn, and modelled with extreme care."
Again, in 1868, the "Art Journal" says of Sir Frederic's _Actæa_: "The
artist has made some attempt to paint flesh in its freshness and
transparency, and indeed the more he renounces the opacity of the German
school, and the more he can realize the brilliance of the old Venetian
painters, the better."
In 1869, the "Athenæum" praised the _Sister's Kiss_, as "a lovely
group," but complained that the execution was a "little too smooth,"--a
complaint not infrequently echoed from time to time by the artist's
critics. Some years later we find Mr. W. M. Rossetti making the same
complaint in criticising _Winding the Skein_.
In 1875 the picture, _Portions of the Interior of the Grand Mosque at
Damascus_, won great praise, as "a remarkably delicate piece of work, in
which the beautiful colouring of the tiled walls and mosaic pavement are
skilfully rendered."
In 1876, the quondam hostile "Art Journal" is completely converted by
the _Daphnephoria_: "To project such a scene upon canvas presupposes a
man of high poetic imagination, and when it is accompanied by such
delicacy and yet such precision of drawing and such sincerity of
modelling, the poet is merged in the painter and we speak of such a one
as a master. There is, indeed, nothing more consolatory to those who
take an interest in British art than the knowledge that we have among us
a man of such pure devotion and lofty aim."
It was in 1875, that Mr. Ruskin, resuming his _rôle_ of an Academy
critic, claimed Leighton as "a kindred Goth," and confessed, "I
determined on writing this number of 'Academy Notes,' simply because I
was so much delighted with Mr. Leslie's _School_, Mr. Leighton's _Little
Fatima_, Mr. Hook's _Hearts of Oak_, and Mr. Couldery's _Kittens_."
In his lectures on the Art of England, the same critic, speaking of
Leighton's children, says: "It is with extreme gratitude, and
unqualified admiration, that I find Sir Frederic condescending from the
majesties of Olympus to the worship of those unappalling powers, which,
heaven be thanked, are as brightly Anglo-Saxon as Hellenic; and painting
for us, with a soft charm peculiarly his own, the witchcraft and the
wonderfulness of childhood."
Upon the _Egyptian Slinger_ of the same year, which Mr. Ruskin terms the
"study of man in his Oriental function of scarecrow (symmetrically
antithetic to his British one of game preserver)," his criticism is
interesting, but adverse. The critic who elsewhere acknowledged fully
the artist's acutely observant and enthusiastic study of the organism of
the human body, confesses himself unable to recognize his skill, or to
feel sympathy with the subjects that admit of its display. It is, he
goes on to say further of the _Slinger_, "it is, I do not doubt,
anatomically correct, and with the addition of the corn, the poppies,
and the moon, becomes semi-artistic; so that I feel much compunction in
depressing it into the Natural History class; and the more, because it
partly forfeits its claim even to such position, by obscuring in
twilight and disturbing our minds, in the process of scientific
investigation, by sensational effects of afterglow and lunar effulgence,
which are disadvantageous, not to the scientific observer only, but to
less learned spectators; for when simple persons like myself, greatly
susceptible to the influence of the stage lamps and pink side-lights,
first catch sight of this striding figure from the other side of the
room, and take it, perhaps, for the angel with his right foot on the sea
and the left on the earth, swearing there shall be Time no longer; or
for Achilles alighting from one of his lance-cast-long leaps on the
shore of Scamander, and find on near approach that all this grand
straddling and turning down of the gas mean practically only a lad
shying stones at sparrows, we are only too likely to pass it petulantly
without taking note of what is really interesting in this eastern custom
and skill."
[Illustration: EGYPTIAN SLINGER (1875)]
The most recent criticism of importance on the art of Leighton is
contained in an admirable volume by M. de la Sizeranne.[13] We take this
opportunity of quoting a few sentences from an appreciation which opens
with the significant remark that Sir Frederic Leighton is officially the
representative of English painting on the Continent, and, in reality,
the representative of Continental painting in England, and concludes by
tracing the definitely English ideal that underlies the artist's work.
Elsewhere the critic says, "Ce qui est britannique en M. Leighton,
quoique bien voilé par son éclectisme, transparaîtra encore." Apart from
Leighton's distinctively native predilection for certain subjects, M. de
la Sizeranne finds him very English in his treatment of draperies, for
instance, a treatment which he traces ingeniously to the much study
given to the Greek drapery of the Elgin marbles by the English School,
since the days of the Pre-Raphaelites. Elsewhere, taking as his text the
picture _The Spirit of the Summit_, he says: "Des sujets qui élèvent la
pensée vers les sommets de la vie ou de l'histoire, de sorte qu'on ne
puisse se rappeler un nez ou une jambe sans se souvenir de quelque haute
leçon évangélique, ou de moins de quelque grande nécessité sociale,
voilà ce que M. Leighton a traité. Et un style beaucoup plus sobre que
celui d'Overbeck, beaucoup plus viril que celui de M. Bouguereau, voilà
comment il les a traités." Again: "La grandeur de la communion humaine,
la noblesse de la paix, tel est le thème qui a le plus souvent et le
mieux inspiré M. Leighton. Et cela il ne l'a pas trouvé en France, ni
ailleurs. C'est bien une idée anglaise." No better summing up of the
chronicle of the life work of the artist could well be found.
But we have pursued far enough this study of an artist's progress
through the thorny, devious ways of art criticism. We have reached the
point, in fact, where the comparative uncertainties of an artist's
career make way for the certainties. With one quotation more, in which
we have a tribute from another critic, Mr. Comyns Carr, we may fitly
close: "No painter of our time," said Mr. Carr, "maintains a firmer or
more constant adherence to those severe principles of design which have
received the sanction of great example in the past. Sir Frederic
Leighton has never lowered the standard of his work in deference to any
popular demand, and for this persistent devotion to his own highest
ideals he deserves well of all who share his faith in the power of
beauty."
[Illustration: ELISHA AND THE SHUNAMITE'S SON (1881)]