PENCIL DRAWINGS OF PLANTS AND FLOWERS
1850-1860
No attempt at an appreciation of Leighton's art would be complete were
it not to include, and even accentuate, the distinct value of the
exquisite drawings of flowers and leaves which he made in pencil and
silver point between the years 1852 and 1860.[37] As regards certain
all-important qualities these studies are unrivalled. I was well
acquainted with the drawings Leighton made for his pictures during the
last twenty-five years of his life, and I had oftentimes heard Watts
express an unbounded admiration for these; but when, looking through
the portfolios of early drawings after Leighton's death, I came upon
these exquisite fragments in pencil, it seemed that I had found for
the first time the real key to the inner chamber of his genius. As
reproductions of the beauty in line, form, and structure--the
architecture, so to speak, of vegetation--nothing ever came closer to
Nature revealed by a human touch through a treatment on a flat
surface.
On December 22, 1852, Leighton writes to his mother from Rome: "I long
to find myself again face to face with Nature, to follow it, to watch
it, and to copy it, closely, faithfully, ingenuously--as Ruskin
suggests, 'choosing nothing and rejecting nothing,'" and it is in this
spirit that he set to work when he filled sketch-books with exquisite
studies of the flowers and plants he loved best. These records of the
joy with which Nature filled his artistic temperament are to some more
truly sympathetic than his elaborate work, for the reason that, while
enjoying their beauty, we come in contact with the pure spirit of
Leighton's genius unalloyed by any sense of intellectual effort. In
his diary, "Pebbles," on August 21, 1852, Leighton writes: "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 true 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 clusters 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_." No exact name has
ever been given to the special creed of the artist's religion; to that
condition of the soul which Socrates in Plato's _Phaedrus_ declares has
come to the birth as having seen most of truth together with that of
the Philosopher, the Musician, and the Lover. The artist penetrates
further than others can, into the mysteries of Nature's marvels as
revealed through the eye, and he therefore comes in closer union
through the sense of sight with the spirit of the artist of the
infinite, and can gauge better the immeasurable distance which exists
between Divine and human creation, and this is felt more distinctly,
more reverently, when the artist simply copies Nature than when his
own daemon is taking a part in the inspiring of his inventions.
Leighton writes to his mother when he first reaches Rome in 1852: "I
wish that I had a mind, simple and unconscious, even as a child"; and
we find the evidence in these studies by Leighton of plants and
flowers that his wish, for the time when he was drawing them, was
granted; no intellectual choice nor assumption of scholarly theories
have taken part in their achievement; they are spontaneous echoes of
Divine creations when he was "face to face with Nature," and there is
no reflection of any teaching but hers. Nature and her child have been
alone together. The results are unalloyed expressions of the joy he
felt in pure impersonal revelations of beauty. They are distinguished
because elemental, recording the birth of the ingenuous response of a
human spirit to a superhuman perfection of workmanship. When in such
union of spirit with Nature, the artist-soul enters his most sacred
shrine. An ecstatic joy is kindled by wonder, admiration, adoration,
from which joy is inspired a peremptory impulse to endeavour to
reproduce in his human handicraft the marvels of creation. Such
experiences result from instinctive inevitable conditions, and, coming
from the illumination of genius, belong to a higher level than that on
which the intellect works;[38] no temptations of the personal daemon
simmer behind and distort the pure vision of Nature, provoking
suggestions which are human of the human--the desire to excel, the
ambition to be first, the love to display individuality. That inner
life, the very core and most vital meaning of Leighton's being, the
life that held revelry with all Nature's beauty, had been enraptured
through the pure innocent loveliness in the flowers. Take, for
instance, the page where he has _explained_ the cyclamen he found at
Tivoli in October 1856, and take a cyclamen, the real flower, and
dissect it. What precious work we find: the ribbed calyx spreading out
from the satin sheen of the stalk to clasp the bulbous swelling at the
root of the petals--brilliant like finest blown glass, each calyx
fringed round with emerald green flutings--inside straw colour dashed
with brown speckles, all this triumph of minute finish just to start
the sail-like petals of the flower itself. What reverence and
enthusiasm was excited in Leighton as he pored over such things is
vouched for by this page (and others similar of different flowers),
exquisite portraits of every view of the cyclamen; faint notes in
writing recording the colours which his pencil failed to do.
[Illustration: STUDIES OF CYCLAMEN. Tivoli, October 1856
Leighton House Collection]
[Illustration: WREATH OF BAY LEAVES.
Drawn at the Bagni di Lucca, 1854. Leighton House Collection]
Referring to his journey through the Tyrol, in 1852, Leighton writes:
"I had been dwelling with unwearied admiration on the exquisite grace
and beauty of the details, as it were, of Nature; every little flower
of the field had become to me a new source of delight; the very blades
of grass appeared to me in a new light."
Not only his artistic temperament, but also circumstances, had guided
Leighton's instincts into the worship of beauty--beauty such as can be
conceived alone by the artistic temperament--as the divinest element
in creation and one to be reverenced beyond all others; and when "face
to face" with Nature, having no desire but to record that reverence
and worship "ingenuously," he made these incomparable drawings. They
were done solely for the sake of the joy he felt in doing them, and
Leighton certainly never expected any recognition of their beauty by a
future generation. Stray leaves from a sketch-book have been collected
and preserved in the Leighton House Collection, having been extracted
from a mass of old dusty papers. On these pages are exquisite
pencilled outlines of cyclamen, of a crocus, of oleander flowers, of a
bramble branch, of sprays of bay and of plants of the agaves. They are
dated the year after Leighton's great success, 1856, the year of his
failure. In 1854, when he spent the summer at the Bagni di Lucca, he
drew studies of bay-leaves twined into a wreath and festoons of the
vine (see List of Illustrations and design on cover). Three days after
Leighton's death, in a letter to _The Times_ from one who knew him, a
reference was made to this visit to Lucca.[39] This old acquaintance,
who was then seeing him daily for three months, writes, "He was the
most brilliant man I ever met." It was this brilliant entity, this
attractive personality, who spent hours over drawing the flower of a
pumpkin and of a "_faded pumpkin_." Professor Aitchison records how he
found Leighton at work over this drawing.[40] The celebrated "Lemon
Tree," to which Professor Aitchison refers, and of which Ruskin also
writes,[41] though the most renowned of Leighton's drawings of plants,
and doubtless a _tour de force_,--a wonderful achievement,--has not, I
think, the same perfection of charm which many of the earlier, less
complete studies possess.[42] The sketch of a portion of a deciduous
tree[43] is perhaps a greater triumph in draughtsmanship than even the
"Lemon Tree," because the foliage has a frailer and less definite
aspect, and is yet reproduced with an absolute certainty of outline.
The "Lemon Tree," drawn at Capri in 1859, was done for a purpose.
Leighton had a feeling that the pre-Raphaelites ought not to have it
all their own way on the score of elaborate finish and perfection in
the drawing of detail. My first introduction to the "Lemon Tree" was
on an occasion when Leighton and I had had an argument respecting the
principles of the pre-Raphaelite school. He fetched the drawing from a
corner in his studio, and, while showing it to me, said words to the
effect that it was not only the pre-Raphaelites who reverenced the
detail in Nature, and who thought it worth the time and labour it took
to record the beauty in the wonderful minutiae of her structure. If
sufficient pains were taken, any one, he maintained, who could draw at
all ought to be able to draw the complete detail of every object set
before him. But, for the very reason that the "Lemon Tree" was done
with a further purpose than the mere joy the beauty of Nature excited
in Leighton's aesthetic senses, there is not, I think, quite the same
convincing charm in this drawing as in some other more fragmentary
studies.
In considering this early work by Leighton, it should be borne in
mind, that in those years when it was executed, photography had not
yet given the standard of a finish and perfection in actual
delineation which outrivals every record made by human hand and eye.
Photography has, in these later years, given the proportion and detail
in beautiful architecture, the form of trees, plants, and flowers,
their exquisite delicacy of structure, their grace and intricacy of
line: all this has been secured and pictured for us by the camera;
and, up to a certain point, very precious and truthful are these
memoranda of the aspects of nature and art. Many of us remember the
days when enthusiastic disciples of the wonderful new art of
photography prophesied that no other would soon be needed, and that
the draughtsman's craft would before long cease to exist. And further,
they maintained it only required the discovery of a means to
photograph colour for the painter's art also to be demolished.
Artists, however, knew better. What was valuable in the records of
photography, and what was of most intrinsic worth in the records
created through means of the human hand and eye, were absolutely
incomparable quantities. The treatment of nature in a photographic
picture, however admirable and complete, must always be lacking in the
evidence of any preference, reverence, or enthusiasm--in the sacred
fire, in fact, which inspires the draughtsman's pencil and the
painter's brush. Photography is indiscriminate; human art is
selective, and is precious as it evinces and secures a choiceness in
selection. However truthfully a photograph may record beauty of line
and form in nature, it inevitably also records in its want of
discrimination any facts which may exist in the view photographed;
these counter-balance the effect of such beauty, and mar the subtle
impression of charm which scenes in nature produce on a mind sensitive
to beauty.
[Illustration: STUDY OF LEMON TREE. Capri, 1859
By permission of Mr. S. Pepys Cockerell]
[Illustration: STUDY OF DECIDUOUS TREE.
Leighton House Collection]
As the vision of the artist which attracts this feeling for beauty
focalises itself in the sight, he naturally perceives but vaguely any
other objects before him; therefore, the facts inspired by such
preference become accentuated, and all their surroundings subordinated
to it. For this reason, also, what is called, somewhat erroneously,
the sculptor's sense of line and form--the sense applying equally to
the treatment of line and form on a flat surface as in the round--is
not so obvious in a photograph as in a good drawing. The eye of one
possessing a gift for drawing transmits to the brain the structure of
an object, not only as it is outlined against other objects, but also
as the different planes of which it is formed recede or advance, slant
one way or another, curve or straighten. To a truly gifted
draughtsman, such as Leighton, there is an absorbing interest in
working out the forms of the objects he sees which delight his sense
of beauty,--of guiding his pencil so that it echoes on the paper the
gratification with which his senses are inspired through his artistic
perceptions. The result will be--that the drawing he produces almost
unconsciously accentuates what has delighted him most in the objects
he is depicting, and, explaining further than does even an actual copy
by photography the element of beauty which has inspired him, carries
with it also an inspiring effect on the spectator: the drawing will
have something in it which affects us as a living influence, an
influence which the most perfect of photographs can never possess. The
actual perspective may be absolutely correct in the photograph--so may
be the placing on the paper of every turn and twist in a bough or a
leaf as regards their outlines; but compared to a beautiful drawing we
feel the want of mind behind it: no human sense has revelled in the
intricacies of growth and foreshortening, no human eye has traced the
exquisite grace and sweep of the curve and the happy spring of the
shoot alive with uprising sap. Just that accentuation which
unwittingly creeps into the human touch, denoting that the
construction of the form has been perceived and appreciated with
delight, is lacking. The line of a pathway rising up on the sweep of
an upland, a line which is always so fascinatingly suggestive, does
not lead you farther over the hill in a photograph as it does in a
little woodcut by William Blake. Just that push and movement is
wanting in the sense of the line which in a really fine drawing gives
it a living quality. Another shortcoming is caused by the inevitable
flattening of tone in a photograph. The brightest light does not
detach itself, the darkest spot, to some degree always, even in the
best print, is merged in the general shadow.
[Illustration: EARLY STUDIES OF KALMIA, OLEANDER, AND
RHODODENDRON FLOWERS
Leighton House Collection]
The idea that photography could supersede the art of the draughtsman
soon exploded. Artists have used photography--some intelligently, as
did Watts--many unintelligently. The illegitimate use of photography,
the endeavour to make the lens do the work which alone the human eye
and hand can effect, was seen in lifeless portraits, painted partly
from the sitter, partly from a photograph. It is natural that any
genuine artist should rebel against such cheapening of his art; and
the deadening effects of relying on photography "to help you out" have
brought about the result that the qualities in art which are furthest
removed from those which it has in common with photography have been
forced to the front, and the grammar of drawing, the groundwork of
nature's structures which the human hand and the photographic lens can
both record, has ceased to be considered as all-important. In
Leighton's work this grammar was in itself developed into a fine art.
By comparing any sketch he made of a leaf or of a flower with a
photograph of the same, this will be evident to any eye that can
appreciate grace and quality in drawing.
The latest phase of using photography to help out the drawing is found
in some modern illustrations where the lens has found the outline, the
right placing of the scene on the paper, the right proportion and
perspective in buildings, and the general light and shade of the scene
for the illustrator--the human hand only coming in to give breadth of
effect, to undo the tell-tale finish of the photograph, and to make it
into what is called "a picture" on the lines of a Turner or a
Whistler.
All these were unknown ways in Leighton's youth, and to the end of his
life he could make no use whatever of photography in his work. He took
a kodak with him once on his travels, but the results were amusingly
negative. "From the moment an artist relies on photography he does no
good," was a statement I heard him make. Leighton believed in no short
cuts. Enthusiasm, labour, sacrifice, renouncement,--these, and these
alone, he maintained, can secure for the artist a worthy success.
[Illustration: STUDY OF A FADED FLOWER OF PUMPKIN. Rome, 1854
Leighton House Collection]
[Illustration: STUDY OF FLOWER OF A PUMPKIN. Meran, 1856
Leighton House Collection]
[Illustration: STUDIES OF BRANCHES OF VINE. Bagni di Lucca, 1854
Leighton House Collection]
[Illustration: BRANCH OF VINE. Bellosquardo, Florence, 1856
Leighton House Collection]
There are those who would define genius by describing it as the
faculty for taking infinite pains. But obviously genius is in itself a
power, born of inspiration, which so completely overmasters all other
conditions in a nature, that no labour nor time is taken into account
so long as the impelling force obtains utterance. The inborn
conviction in a nature that it has the power to create, demolishes all
impediments which come in the way to hinder this power from stamping
itself into a form. The necessity of taking infinite pains is but the
natural and inevitable consequence of the burning desire born, who
knows how? in the spirit of those who are blessed with genius, and the
faculty to discern how best to develop it. Leighton, by reason,
perhaps, of the very spontaneity of his own gifts, and also of his
extreme natural modesty, allied to the conscientiousness with which he
carried out his feeling of duty towards his vocation, was apt to lay
more stress on the necessity for taking pains than on the necessity of
possessing the real source of his power of industry. He saw too often
the fatal results of artists depending on talent to achieve what only
talent allied to industry can perform, for him not to accentuate the
all-importance of unceasing labour. He wrote to his elder sister with
reference to one of these fatal results: "I have not seen that young
man's recent work, neither do I hunger and thirst thereafter;
twenty-one years ago, or more, his parents brought me a composition of
his--it justified the highest hopes--it was very ambitious in its
scope (though the work of a child), and the ambition was justified
in the ability it displayed. Nothing that I could have done at his age
approached it. I told his parents so. He ought now to have been a very
considerable artist, to say the least--he no longer even _aims_! He
told me a year or two ago that he had _ceased to design_! He paints
portraits, and twists a little moustache under an eyeglass. He is
_nothing_, as far as the world knows, and I doubt whether he is hiding
himself under a bushel. I fear vanity and idleness have rotted out his
talents. It is a strange and a sad case. I often quote it (without
names) to those who show precocious gifts." His attached friend and
fellow-Academician, Mr. Briton Riviere, writes of Leighton:--
"I have always believed that his ruling passion was Duty--the keenest
possible sense of it; to do anything he had to do as perfectly as
possible, and to be always at his best. He was evidently a believer in
Goethe's maxim that 'an artist who does anything, does all.' In his
own work, in what concerned his colleagues and the outside body of
artists, in fact in everything he did. Nothing easily or passively
done satisfied him; but in every case the decision and action were
brought by care and work--if possible, executed by himself; and no
pressure of time or labour ever made him escape such personal trouble,
or caused him to transfer it to the shoulders of another. This temper
of mind was shown even in small matters, which so busy a man might
well have left for others to do. I think it sometimes injured his own
work as an artist, because, though a great artist can never be evolved
except by years of patient work and strenuous effort to do his very
best always, yet, on the other hand, it is often the happy, easy work
and absolutely spontaneous effort at the moment by such a hand which
is his very best. Such happy, easy work probably Leighton would seldom
allow himself to do, and never would leave at the right moment, but
would still strive to make better and more complete. He must still
elaborate it and try to make it more perfect; and this it was which
made his old friend and enthusiastic admirer, Watts, sometimes say
"how much finer Leighton's work would be if he would admit the
accidental into it."
I remember once casually remarking to Leighton how much easier writing
was than painting. He answered quickly but seriously--quite
impressively: "Believe me, nothing is easy if it is done as well as
you can possibly do it." This was Leighton's creed of creeds. Whatever
genius or facilities an artist may possess, he must ignore them as
factors in the fight. He must possess them unconsciously--the whole
conscious effort being concentrated on surmounting difficulties, not
on encouraging facilities.
To return to the subject of this chapter. It would be obviously
unreasonable to attempt to compare slight studies of plants and
flowers, however precious, with finished important works of art such
as "Cimabue's Madonna," "A Syracusan Bride," "Daphnephoria," "Captive
Andromache," "The Return of Persephone," or, in fact, with any of
Leighton's well-known paintings--or indeed with those masterly studies
of the figure and draperies in black and white chalk, drawn for his
pictures, or when he was seized with the beauty of an attitude while
his model was resting. These, though executed in a few seconds, are
true and subtle records of the perfection in the form and structure of
the human figure, proving the existence of a knowledge and of a sense
of beauty which Watts declared were unrivalled since the days of
Pheidias. The later masterly studies of landscape in oil-colour which
formerly lined the walls of his Kensington studio, in which can be so
truly discerned the distinctive colouring and atmosphere of the
various countries where they were painted, also are greater as
achievements than the pencil drawings. Nevertheless, when studying
Leighton's genius with a view to gauge rightly its power and also its
limitations, it is, I maintain, essential to take into account these
direct studies from Nature, made with the object solely of following,
watching, and copying her faithfully, ingenuously, "choosing nothing
and rejecting nothing," but into which crept unconsciously the
undeniable evidence of his native gifts. As proofs of spontaneous
power in the quality of his genius, they refute much unjust criticism
which has been hurled at Leighton's art since his death. Sir William
Richmond wrote[44]:--
"That term of abuse and of contempt, trite now, on account of the
mannerism of its constant adoption by ephemeral critics, and sometimes
adopted by poorly equipped artists, 'academic,' has been most
unjustly, in its derogatory sense, applied to Leighton's art.
"In point of fact, it is academic, but only in the good sense of being
highly educated, very scientific, and restrained. And in that sense it
is a pity that there is not more of such academic art. The bad sense,
wherein such criticism is applicable, being justly advanced towards
work that displays no inspiration, no originality, that is correct and
commonplace, balanced without enthusiasm, adequate without reason, and
accurate without good taste in the choice of beautiful and expressive
gestures, forms, and colours, and is preoccupied and narrow."
It is probably the restraint, the science, the high education in
Leighton's finished pictures which have provoked unsympathetic critics
to endeavour to demolish Leighton's reputation as a great artist. To
these, such qualities would seem to deny the existence of any
sensitiveness, any spontaneity in his art. They have asserted that it
is cold, dry--academic. For the reason that science, calculated
effects, style, and high education--qualities rarely found in modern
English art--are evident in Leighton's pictures, they conclude that
the painter is possessed of no intuitive genius. They take essentially
a British, a non-cosmopolitan standpoint from which to preach. They do
not take into account the standard towards which Leighton was ever
aiming. He may not have attained the goal towards which he worked, but
the nature of that goal should be understood and recognised before any
criticism on his work can pass as intelligent and just; and these
exquisite drawings of flowers and plants come to our aid in confuting
sterile estimates of Leighton's art, which deny any other elements but
those which can be acquired by painstaking and teachable qualities.
Here are records of Nature complicated by no intellectual choice, no
academic learning, no results of high education; and what is the
result? an undeniable evidence of the finest, most tender
sensitiveness for beauty, resulting in a complete and perfect
rendering of the subtlest forms of growth. When "face to face" with
Nature, Leighton's aesthetic emotions were keen enough and
all-sufficient to create these perfect records, as later in his life
he created unrivalled drawings of the human figure in even more
spontaneous and certainly more rapid strokes of his pencil, and
landscape sketches which prove undeniably his gifts as a colourist;
but it may be questioned whether his aesthetic emotions had as great a
_staying_ power as those qualities of heart and brain which made
Leighton a great man, independent of the position he held as a great
artist. His sensibilities were of the keenest; the agility and
vitality of his brain power were quite abnormal. As Watts wrote, a
"magnificent intellectual capacity, and an unerring and instantaneous
spring upon the point to unravel." It seemed, however, that this
vitality and agility did at times run away with that more abiding
strength of aesthetic emotion which impregnates the very greatest art
with a serenity, a sublime atmosphere,--an emotion which denotes a
mood in which the artist has been steeped throughout the creation of a
work, from the first moment he conceives it to the moment when he puts
the last touch to the canvas, and affects the actual manipulation of
the pigment. The above criticism applies only justly to certain of
Leighton's works. In many of his paintings the poetic motive which
inspired their invention,--their mental atmosphere,--governs the
achievements throughout, though doubtless these works also would have
had a more convincing effect as art had the surface possessed a more
vibrating quality. Among those pictures in which form, colour, tone,
and expression are completely dominated by their poetic meaning are
"Lieder ohne Worte," a lovely, though youthful, work; "David;"
"Ariadne," a picture little known, but in some respects perhaps the
most poetic Leighton ever painted; "Summer Moon" (Watts' favourite
Leighton), "Elisha Raising the Son of the Shunammite," "Winding the
Skein," "Music Lesson," "Antique Juggling Girl," "Daedalus and Icarus,"
"Helios and Rhodos," "Golden Hours," "Cymon and Iphigenia," "The
Spirit of the Summit," "Flaming June," "Clytie" (unfinished).
[Illustration: "ARIADNE ABANDONED BY THESEUS; WATCHES FOR HIS
RETURN. ARTEMIS RELEASES HER BY DEATH." 1868
By permission of Lord Pirrie]
[Illustration: "ELISHA RAISING THE SON OF THE SHUNAMMITE." 1881]
[Illustration: "DAEDALUS AND ICARUS." 1869
By permission of Sir Alexander Henderson]
No aspect of his own work was a secret from Leighton. No one knew
better than he did his own limitations, or why it was necessary to
keep himself in hand by methods of procedure in his painting which he
could guide by his ever present intellectual acumen. He wrote to his
father on March 2, 1855, having just completed the two pictures,
"Cimabue's Madonna" and "Romeo": "You ask for _my_ opinion of my
pictures; you couldn't ask a more embarrassing and unsatisfactory
question; I think, indeed, that they are very creditable works for my
age, but I am anything but satisfied with them, and believe that I
could paint both of them better now. I am particularly anxious that
persons whom I love or esteem should think neither more nor less of
my artistic capacity than I deserve--_the plain truth_; I am therefore
very circumspect in passing a verdict on myself in addressing myself
to such persons; I think, however, you may expect me to become
eventually the best draughtsman in my country."
A biographer's obvious moral duty is to aim at presenting impartially
"the plain truth," following Leighton's lead in not desiring to give
either a more or less favourable view of his capacities as an artist
than they deserve. On May 7, 1864, Leighton writes in a letter to his
father and mother: "I had a kind note this morning from Ruskin in
which, after criticising two or three things, he speaks very warmly of
other points in my work and of the development of what he calls
'enormous power and sense of beauty.' I quote this for what it is
worth, because I know it will give you pleasure, but I have _not_ and
_never shall have_ 'enormous power,' though I have some 'sense of
beauty.'" Leighton remained ever far from being contented with his own
work. "I alone know how far I have fallen short of my ideal," he says,
many years later, to the old acquaintance of the Lucca days. He had
studied under the shadow of the great masters; and though never an
imitator even of the greatest,[45] he had set himself a standard of
supreme excellence, more easily approached under the conditions in
which artists worked in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth
centuries than it possibly could be in those of the nineteenth. With
respect to his power of draughtsmanship and his natural sense of
beauty, Leighton knew his place was among the greatest. His
appreciation and love of colour were also far keener than those
possessed by the average artist. He felt nevertheless that he lacked
the inevitable and continuous force which alone gives "_enormous
power_" and ease to the craftsman, when he deals with work on a large
scale, and which carries with it the absolutely convincing effect of
the world-renowned art of the past. Realising that the "enormous
power" was not there because the ever conclusively propelling force
was lacking, perhaps owing partly to the want of robust health, and
also doubtless from the scattering of his powers in many directions to
which he was drawn by a sense of duty, Leighton, in working out the
designs of his large pictures, clung all the more resolutely to the
exercise of that system which he had adopted, and which many of his
friends--Watts and Briton Riviere among the number--thought tended to
cramp his genius. He was not sufficiently sure of himself to admit the
"accidental" into his work.
[Illustration: "CAPTIVE ANDROMACHE." 1888
The Corporation of Manchester]
[Illustration: STUDY IN COLOUR FOR "CAPTIVE ANDROMACHE." 1888
By permission of Mrs. Stewart Hodgson]
[Illustration: "WEAVING THE WREATH." 1873]
[Illustration: "WINDING THE SKEIN." 1880
By permission of the Fine Art Society, the owners of the
Copyright]
[Illustration: "MUSIC LESSON." 1877
By permission of the Fine Art Society, the owners of the
Copyright]
Some critics have, however, gone beyond the mark in emphasising this
characteristic of Leighton's methods. One writes: "Deliberateness of
workmanship and calculation of effect, into which inspiration of the
moment is never allowed to enter, are the chief characteristics of the
painter's craftsmanship. The inspiration stage was practically passed
when he took the crayon in his hand; and to this circumstance probably
is to be assigned the absence of realism which arrests the attention."
This statement is contrary to many which I have heard fall from
Leighton's own lips. He constantly drew my attention to the fact--a
fact on which he laid great stress, and of which many models were
witnesses--that he _invariably_ recurred to Nature in the later stages
of his pictures, in order to imbibe renewed inspiration from the source
of all his aesthetic emotions--Nature. Any one who carefully studies
Leighton's pictures will find evidence of this in the works themselves,
in the accessories no less than in the principal figures. During the
exhibition of some thirty of Leighton's finest paintings at Leighton
House in 1900, I was daily more and more impressed by the fact that
the final touches in those pictures had been inspired by the actual
subtlety of Nature's aspects, and transmitted to the canvas by the
artist direct from the objects before him without conscious
calculation. Very obviously was this the case not only in the principal
features of the design--the countenances and the hands and feet of the
figures--but in such details as the flowers, fabrics of draperies,
carpets, mother-of-pearl inlaying, found (for instance) in "A Noble
Venetian Lady," "Summer Moon," "Sister's Kiss," "Weaving the Wreath,"
"Winding the Skein," "The Music Lesson," "Atalanta." In all these
pictures exists the internal convincing evidence contradicting the
statement that "the inspiration stage was practically past when he took
the crayon in his hand." This, however, did not obscure in some of
Leighton's large finished pictures undoubted evidences of arrangements
and calculated effects, which are not over-ruled by an art which
conceals them, by the art which disguises art,--the clenching force of
the inevitable. The beauty of line, the grouping of masses, the
"composition" evident in the posing of the figures--admirable and
unlaboured as all these arrangements are--not infrequently lack this
convincing sign of the inevitable. It is too obvious that they have
been chosen by the intellectual taste of their maker. When Goethe was
expatiating on Shakespeare and comparing his genius with his own, he
said, as a proof of his own inferiority, that he knew well how every
word was made to come in its place, but with Shakespeare they came
without Shakespeare knowing.[46] Leighton, like Goethe, was conscious
that his genius could not vie with the greatest in the world--the
genius he was able to appreciate as Goethe did Shakespeare's; but he
also knew, as did Goethe, exactly the place his own art ought to take;
he knew that in his sense of style--which, in its true meaning, is the
echo of Nature in her choicest, noblest moods,--in his sense of the
beauty of the human structure, in his power of draughtsmanship, his
work was superior to that of any of his contemporaries in England. The
fact of the greatness of Leighton's powers in some directions
challenges a comparison between his work and that of the giants of old
who possess enormous power in all directions. No one knew so well as
did Leighton the place he must take when he entered the lists with the
giants: "I have _not_ and _never shall have_ 'enormous power.'" He
writes in 1856 from Paris to his Master, Steinle:--
_Translation._]
PARIS, RUE PIGALLE 21.
MY GOOD AND DEAR FRIEND,--Accidentally I had an idle morning
when I received your dear letter, and therefore answer it
immediately. With your usual modesty you put aside all that I
say of goodness and love, but I repeat it unweariedly.
Steinle, my good Master, if in this insincere world I have an
unfeigned, pure feeling, it is my warm gratitude and love for
you; and the time when I bloomed, gay and full of hope, in
your garden will light me through life like a sunny spot in
the past; and I yield myself to this feeling the more
confidently, since I _know_ that I am under no delusion in it.
I have fairly strong insight, and know exactly what I owe to
you, and for what I have to thank nature; I can already
appraise my moderate natural gifts; but I know also that these
gifts received _through you alone_ the impression of _taste_
that can alone make them effective, and that in your hands
they were refined as in a furnace. An English painter seldom
lacks fancy and invention, but _taste_, that which forms and
embellishes the raw material, _that_ is almost always wanting
with us--and it is you I must thank for the _little_ I
possess.
To flatter was an impossibility with Leighton. He paid every artist
the respect of believing he desired the same sincerity shown in the
criticism of his work that he,--Leighton,--wished when his own was
judged, and with which he judged it himself. A remarkable feature in
his character was the power he had of retaining so secure a hold on
his own standards of excellence without for a moment losing his
individual self-centre, yet at the same time possessing that of
entering sympathetically into the view of other artists--a view often
quite contrary to his own--and generously acknowledging every merit
that could by any possibility be extracted from their work. Mr. Briton
Riviere writes: "The intensity of his own personal belief was well
known to himself. He once said to me, in reference to a clever picture
which he greatly admired for some of its qualities, that he could not
really enjoy it, owing to its careless drawing. On another occasion,
when at Mr. Russell's sale I had bought a very vigorous study by Etty,
and Leighton was quite enthusiastic about its colour and painting, he
said, 'But I could not bear it on my wall, with that drawing,' and he
laughed at himself for this strictness, and said, 'I know that I am a
prig about drawing.' However, not only did this never blind him to the
claims of another kind of art, but I think he was even more keen to
recommend for approval the work of any school of painting for which,
personally, he had no particular liking or sympathy. 'It is not
whether you or I like it, but what it is on its own merits,' was a
favourite warning of his to any rapid opinion expressed on a picture.
To any one intimately acquainted with his own real views and opinions
it was sometimes surprising to find how well he realised the
intentions, and put himself in the place, of some artist who had
produced something very foreign to his own point of view, and quite
repugnant to his beliefs. This is not a common quality among artists,
whose critical tolerance is often in an inverse ratio to the firmness
of their own particular creed of art faith; and it was one of the many
qualities which marked Leighton out as so admirably fitted for the
Presidency."
Leighton was, undoubtedly, an absolutely competent critic of his own
art; and the fact that his principles had been inspired by a
spontaneous and sincere reverence and admiration for the creations of
artists whom time has crowned as the greatest in the world, and that
with his critical faculty he perceived in what measure he had
succeeded in following in their steps, enabled him to gauge with
absolute justice the merits and shortcomings of his own work, compared
with that of his contemporaries. Whatever those shortcomings were,
certain it is that they did not arise from an absence of those natural
gifts which are the outcome of emotional sensitiveness, nor from a
want of intense feeling for the beauty of Nature, nor from a poverty
of invention. The theory that his art was solely the result of his
having an abnormal power of industry and of taking pains--a theory
which has been advanced many times since Leighton's death--cannot hold
good for a moment with those who impartially study his work from the
beginning of his career. The spontaneity of the impulse to produce in
every born artist is described in the following passage from
Leighton's first discourse, when President, to the students of the
Royal Academy, December 10, 1879, and the description is obviously
drawn from his own personal experience: "The gift of artistic
production manifests itself in the young in an impulse so spontaneous
and so imperative, and is in its origin so wholly emotional and
independent of the action of the intellect, that it at first and for
some time entirely absorbs their energies. The student's first steps
on the bright paths of his working life are obscured by no shadows
save those cast by the difficulties of a technical nature which lie
before him, and these difficulties, which indeed he only half
discerns, serve rather to whet his appetite than to hamper or
discourage him; for his heart whispers that, when he shall have
brushed them aside, the road will be clear before him, and the
utterance of what he feels stirring within him will be from
thenceforward one long unchecked delight. This spirit of spontaneous,
unquestioning rejoicing in production, which is still the privilege of
youth, and which, even now, the very strong sometimes carry with them
through their lives, was indeed, when Art herself was in her prime,
the normal and constant condition of the artistic temper, and shone
out in all artistic work. It is this spirit which gave a perennial
freshness to Athenian Art--the serenest and most spontaneous men have
ever seen. And when again, after many centuries, another Art was born
out of the night of the Dark Ages, and shed its gentle light over the
chaos of society, this spirit once more burst through it into flame.
All forms of Art are alike fired with it. Architecture first, exulting
in new flights of vigorous and bold creation; then Sculpture; last,
Painting, virtually a new Art, looked out on to the world with the
wondering delight of a child, timidly at first, but soon to fill it
with the bright expression of its joy. Those were halcyon days; the
questions, 'Why do I paint?' 'Why do I model?' 'Why should I build
beautifully?' 'What--how--shall I build, model, paint?' had no
existence in the mind of the artist. 'Why,' he might have answered,
'does the lark soar and sing?'"
Though his direct study from Nature mostly took the form, in later
years, of sketching in oil colour views in the different countries in
which he travelled, Leighton showed to the end of his life his great
delight in flowers by continuing to make sketches from them. In 1895,
at Malinmore, he was fascinated by the sea-thistle, and there are four
pages in a sketch-book devoted to rapid sketches of the plant,
_callantra_, which he made there. Notes are written on the first
sketch indicating the colours. It is interesting to compare the early
pencil work executed between 1850 and 1860 with that of forty years
later. Though the handling may be different, there is the same
complete sense and enjoyment of the wonderful architecture of plants
and flowers obvious in both.[47]
[Illustration: STUDY OF SEA THISTLE. Malinmore, Ireland, 1895
From Sketch-book]
[Illustration: STUDY OF SEA THISTLE. Malinmore, Ireland, 1895
From Sketch-book]
[Illustration: "RETURN OF PERSEPHONE." 1891]
[Illustration: STUDY IN COLOUR FOR "RETURN OF PERSEPHONE." 1891
By permission of Mrs. Stewart Hodgson]
FOOTNOTES:
[37] See Appendix, Vol. II., description in Preface to "Catalogue of
the Leighton House Collection."
[38] An artist who was a great flower lover, when relating her
experiences, maintained that it was in the revelation, to her
perceptions, of the infinite perfection of the structure and form of
one flower, that she had realised in her own nature a more intimate
recognition and response to that of the Creator of the Infinite than
had ever been elicited by any church services or creeds, or even, in
fact, by the most sublime scenery. In one small flower she had found an
epitome of the wonders and beauties of all creation, so focussed as to
be grasped closely, and responded to, from the innermost intimate
recesses of her nature with a joy unspeakable.
[39] See Appendix, Vol. II., Preface to "Catalogue of the Leighton House
Collection."
[40] See Appendix, Vol. II., "Lord Leighton, P.R.A., Some
Reminiscences."
[41] Appendix, Vol. II.
[42] Ruskin was mistaken in thinking that the "Lemon Tree" and the
"Byzantine Well" are of the same date. The former drawing was made in
1859, the latter seven years earlier in 1852 (reproduced facing page
80), and is referred to in his diary, "Pebbles." I think this is the
most beautiful drawing of the kind I have ever seen.
[43] See List of Illustrations.
[44] See Appendix, Vol. II.
[45] See letter to Steinle, page 188: "...God forgive me if I am
intolerant; but according to my view an artist must produce his art out
of his own heart, or he is none."
[46] "I remember hearing him (Wordsworth) say that 'Goethe's poetry was
not inevitable enough.' The remark is striking and true; no line in
Goethe, as Goethe said himself, but its maker knew well how it came
there. Wordsworth is right; Goethe's poetry is not inevitable; not
inevitable enough."--Preface to "Poems of Wordsworth," chosen and
edited by Matthew Arnold.
[47] Knowing that Leighton was a frequenter of the Kew Gardens, I asked
Sir W. Thiselton Dyer to write me his recollections of him, which he
most kindly did in the following letter:--
KEW, _January 11, 1906_.
DEAR MRS. BARRINGTON,--My acquaintance with Lord Leighton was
only beginning to ripen into intimacy when he unhappily died.
His somewhat grand seigneur manner at first a little alarmed
me; but when I had broken through his reserve, I became, like
every one else, much attached to him.
He used often to dine in evening dress at a small table behind
a screen at the door of the coffee-room at the Athenaeum. In the
corner adjoining this is a round table known as Abraham's
Bosom, as it was once frequented by Abraham Hayward. Here, on
Royal Society days, we often had a lively scientific party.
Leighton often found it impossible to keep aloof, and joined in
the fun.
I found Sir Frederic, as he was called, was well known to our
men as a visitor to Kew. He used to drive down in his victoria
in the afternoon and take a solitary walk. I only myself came
across him once. I had taken some trouble to get a fine show of
the old-fashioned Dutch tulips known as Bizards and Byblomen. I
found Leighton one day absorbed in the enthusiastic
contemplation of them. There were certain combinations of
colour which completely fascinated him. I remember that he
particularly admired a purplish brown with yellow and a reddish
purple with cream-colour. Both were, I think, in the "key" that
particularly appealed to him. He was very anxious to have them
in his garden in London, and we gave him a little collection,
with directions how to grow them. What was the result I never
heard.
I then suggested that, as it was a lovely spring day, I should
take him a walk. He assented, and we sent his carriage round to
the Lion Gate, nearest to Richmond. I took him through the
Queen's Cottage grounds to show him the sheets of wild
hyacinth. He admitted their beauty, but remarked that the
effect was not pictorial.
That, I think, was Leighton's point of view. With an intense
feeling for beauty, he had little or none for Nature pure and
simple. His art was essentially selective, and I think he took
most pleasure at Kew in the more or less artificial products of
the gardener's art. What he sought was subtle effects of form
and colour. Personally, I appreciate both ways of treating
plants. I am always at war with artists for their undisciplined
and mostly incompetent treatment of vegetation: drawing and
anatomy are usually defective to an instructed eye, such faults
would be intolerable in the figure. Their presence robs me of
much pleasure in looking at Burne-Jones' pictures. I imagine he
mostly made his plants up out of his head. Ruskin, with all his
talk, was both unobservant and careless. Millais, on the other
hand, though I am not aware that he ever had any botanical
training, by sheer force of insight paints plants in a way to
which the most fastidious botanist can take no exception. One
can actually botanise in his foreground of "Over the Hills and
Far Away," yet there is no loss of general pictorial effect.
The plant drawing of Albert Duerer, Holman Hunt, and Alma
Tadema, though more studied, is absolutely satisfying to the
botanist. Sir Joseph Hooker has always complained that the
Royal Academy has never given any encouragement to accurate
plant drawing. Yet I have heard Sir William Richmond say that,
as a student, he made hundreds of careful studies of
plant-form, and that he knew no discipline more profitable. I
remember remarking to an Academician that I thought that in
this respect the competition pictures of the students reached a
higher standard than that of the average May Exhibition, and he
admitted that that was a possible criticism.
Leighton aimed at beauty by selection and discipline. Millais
in his later work looked only to general effect and balance,
but as to detail was content to faithfully reproduce, and did
not select at all. This explains the admiration which I believe
Millais had for Miss North's work. Both produced admirable
results, but they were of an essentially different kind, though
equally admirable.
But whenever Leighton introduced plant-forms, it was penetrated
by his characteristic thoroughness and perfect mastery of what
he was about. I am myself a passionate admirer of the
Gloire-de-Dijon rose. I remember telling Leighton that I did
not think that any one had ever painted it with such consummate
skill as he had. I am told, and quite believe it, that his
pencil studies from plants are as fine as anything that has
ever been done.
Leighton rendered us a very great service on one occasion. Miss
North's pictures were painted on paper, roughly framed, and
simply hung by her on the brick walls of her gallery. They soon
began to rapidly deteriorate. I appealed to L. for advice. I
was, I confess, astonished to receive from him a full, precise,
and business-like report, pointing out exactly what should be
done, and who was the proper person to do it. The gallery was
to be lined with boarding, the pictures were to be properly
framed, cleaned, lightly varnished, and glazed. The report was
at once accepted by the office of works, the work was
successfully carried out, and no trouble has been experienced
since.
In his turn, Leighton sometimes appealed to me. This was
notably the case when he was painting his "Persephone," which I
frankly told him I thought was the most beautiful picture he
had ever painted. He had been in Capri, and had seen on the
rocks a blue flower which he wished to introduce into the
foreground. We made out what it was, and sent him tracings from
plates and sketches from herbarium specimens. These did not
satisfy him, and he ultimately sent to Capri for the living
plant. He worked hard at it, and, I do not doubt, produced a
very beautiful piece of colour.
That year I dined at the Academy. "Persephone" hung over
Leighton's chair, and was the subject of one of the few really
witty remarks I ever heard in an after-dinner speech. But then
the speaker was Lord Justice Bowen.
But his beautiful foreground was all gone. Leighton, and I
think he was right, thought it destroyed the balance of his
colour scheme, and painted it out. But I have always felt sad
to think of the beautiful work that lay buried there.
When he died, we felt very sad at Kew. He had always been so
lovable and disinterested. We decided to send some tribute to
his funeral, but to avoid what was commonplace. So we sent a
large wreath of bay, introducing, in the place of the
conventional berries, single snowdrop flowers. The result was
dignified and, I think, adequate. At any rate, the Academicians
thought so, if, as I have been told, they placed the wreath by
the coffin on the hearse on its way to St. Paul's.
I walked back with Lord Redesdale, one of Leighton's most
intimate friends, who had come up from Batsford to attend.
There was a great gathering at the Athenaeum. I sat next
Millais, already himself stricken with death, and whom I never
saw again.
I am afraid all this will not be very helpful to you, but my
pen ran on to tell you all I could of a good, great, and brave
man, whom it was an honour to have known.--Yours always
sincerely,
W.C. THISELTON DYER.