LEIGHTON AS PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY
1878-1896
Leighton was at Lerici in the autumn of 1878, visiting his dear old
friend Giovanni Costa ("an artist in a hundred--a man in ten
thousand," were Leighton's words describing him), when he received a
telegram stating that Sir Francis Grant was dead. "The President is
dead! Long live the President!" exclaimed Costa. Leighton remained in
Italy, sketching landscapes and painting heads--one, the portrait of
Costa--till his holiday was over, the end of October. On the 18th of
November he was elected President of the Royal Academy. Thirty-five
Academicians voted for Leighton, five for Mr. Horsley.
Leighton wrote to his younger sister:--
1878.
DEAREST GUSSY,--You perhaps have heard from Lina that I had an
overwhelming majority, and that the outer world beyond artistic
has warmly received my election, which is of course infinitely
gratifying, but fills me with a dread of disappointing
everybody. Monday I go to Windsor to be knighted. Yes, I got a
first-class gold medal for my statue[58]--at least, it was
awarded, and I shall get it some time. I also don't mind telling
you in _strict confidence_--because it is not yet a _fait
accompli_--that I am, I believe, to have the "ruban" of an
Officier de la Legion d'Honneur. I am so glad, dear, your wrists
are better--may they keep so. Love to old Joseph (Joseph
Joachim) when you see him.
Most treasured of all congratulations were doubtless these lines from
his beloved master, Steinle:--
_Translation._]
FRANKFURT AM MAIN,
_December 1, 1878_.
DEAR AND HONOURED FRIEND,--To-day I have read in the paper that
the choice of President of the Royal Academy has fallen upon
you, and since I am convinced that this distinguished position
is both appropriate to your services to art, and also certainly
well merited, you must permit an old friend, who remains bound
to you in love only, to offer you his dearest and warmest good
wishes upon this honour. I pray God, that your position may
provide you with great power in your country for good so as to
enable you to encourage the noblest things in art. I am
convinced that you, dear friend, will make a right and fruitful
use of it. I often set my pupils to make enlarged drawings of
single groups from your medieval Equipment for the Defence of
the Town,[59] and rejoice in the admirable studies which you
made for that cartoon. I, dear friend, am in my old age still
active and industrious, and would gladly go on learning. Should
God grant life, I shall next year complete my work on the
Strassburg master, which will demand all my love and strength.
Here we have now built a new gallery, on the other side of the
river Main, and a new studio. The collections are good, and more
suitably accommodated than heretofore, and there is no want of
space for future additions. Perhaps one of your journeys will
bring you again to the old Main town, and so to the arms of your
old friend. My dear President, I repeat my good wishes, and
remain with all my heart, your truly devoted,
EDW. STEINLE.
From his birthplace Leighton received the following announcement:--
BOROUGH OF SCARBOROUGH.
At a meeting of the Council of the Borough of Scarborough, in
the County of York, held in the Town Hall in the said Borough,
on Monday the ninth day of December, 1878,--
Present,--
THE MAYOR (W.C. LAND, Esq.) in the chair,--
It was moved by the Mayor, seconded by Alderman Woodall, and
resolved unanimously: "That this Council learns with peculiar
satisfaction and pleasure of the election of a native of
Scarborough, in the person of SIR FREDERIC LEIGHTON, to the
Presidency of the Royal Academy, and respectfully offers to Sir
Frederic its warm congratulations, and records its conviction
that his great talents as an artist, his attainments as a
scholar, and his many striking qualifications, eminently fit him
to adorn the high position to which he has been called."
W.C. LAND, Mayor.
Robert Browning wrote:--
19 WARWICK CRESCENT, W.,
_November 14, 1878_.
DEAR LEIGHTON,--I wish you joy with all my heart, and
congratulate us all on your election. There ought to have been
no sort of doubt as to the result, but the best of us are
misconceived sometimes, though in your case never was a right
more incontestable. All I hope is that your new duties will in
no way interfere with the practice of your Art. I only venture
to write, now, as one who, so many a year ago, saw your
beginning with "Cimabue," and from that time to this remained
confident what your career would be. But you know all this, and
it requires no answer, being rather a spurt of satisfaction at
my own original discernment than any assurance which I can fancy
you need from,--Yours very truly,
ROBERT BROWNING.
Pen's letter to me, two days since, contained his earnest wishes
for what has just happened, and he will be delighted
accordingly.
From Matthew Arnold:--
ATHENAEUM CLUB, PALL MALL, S.W.,
_November 15_.
MY DEAR LEIGHTON,--One line (which you need not answer) to say
how delighted I am to see what an excellent choice the Royal
Academy has made.
I only hope poor O'Conor may not take advantage of the occasion
to plant an ode and a letter.--Ever sincerely yours,
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
From Hubert Herkomer:--
_November 27, 1878._
MY DEAR SIR FREDERIC LEIGHTON,--I am just recovering from an
attack of brain fever, and although I am not allowed yet to
write, I can no longer wait without dictating a letter to
express my own individual pleasure at your being the new
President.
Three years ago you wrote me a letter after seeing my "Chelsea
Pensioners." Perhaps you little dreamt of the tears of joy that
that letter caused in a young painter, who will always feel that
he owes you a debt of gratitude; and now he glories in your
being the chief of that body which attracts to it all the
principal art of the country. All England feels that you, from
your new position, will give new life to it. Perhaps you will
allow me, when I am sufficiently recovered, to come and see you.
In the meantime believe me to be, with most heartfelt
congratulations,--Sincerely yours,
A.H., _pro_ HUBERT HERKOMER.
SIR FREDERIC LEIGHTON, P.R.A.
A friend writes:--
_November 15._
DEAR MR. LEIGHTON,--I have tried to keep silence, telling myself
that it cannot matter what I think or feel on the subject (and
that it may seem to you a very unnecessary proceeding!); but I
_cannot_ resist the temptation to tell you how warmly I rejoice,
and how earnestly I congratulate _myself_ and all other
hungerers after wholesome beauty of colour and form, and high
ideals of greatness and purity, on your acceptance of a position
that one may hope will, nay must, influence the Art of this time
for good in every sense. One takes a great breath of relief as
one thinks of it!
Were I to describe to you the effect your works produce on me,
and the feeling of real reverence I have for them, I should
appear to exaggerate, and should certainly bore you, so I will
say no more! and I am not given to that sort of thing.
My beloved Lady Waterford was much disappointed that you could
not come and meet her; I need not say, so were we: it was a
great enjoyment to have her, she is like no one else; and I yet
hope you may come and meet here some day. Pray do not answer
this; of course you are overwhelmed with business, and it would
hurt me to have it considered and acknowledged as a
complimentary civility! whereas it is nothing but an involuntary
overflowing to relieve my mind.
From Lord Coleridge:--
1 SUSSEX SQUARE, W.,
_November 24, 1878_.
MY DEAR LEIGHTON,--Let me add one voice more, small but true, to
the great chorus of applause with which your election has been
greeted. It might seem left-handed praise to say that your
election was the only possible one; but it is very true praise
to say it was the only possible one if the highest interests of
English Art, and of the Academy itself, were the sole object of
the electors.
It would have pleased and touched you to hear old Boxall speak
of it. I dined with him alone on Friday, and he was just and
generous, as he always is, in his appreciation of you, and
looked forward to your reign as likely to be one of high aims
and noble motives. It is a small thing to say, but I venture to
agree with him.--Ever sincerely yours,
COLERIDGE.
These are a few among many hundred congratulatory letters Leighton
received on his election. One from Mrs. Fanny Kemble he answered in
the following March, when already he was beset by requests to use his
influence to get friends' friends' work hung on the walls of the
Academy:--
_March 20, 1879._
DEAR MRS. KEMBLE,--Many thanks for your very amiable words of
congratulations on the honour done me by the Royal Academy. The
kind sympathy shown towards me by my friends had added very
greatly indeed to the pleasure my election gave me. The belief
entertained by Miss ---- that the admission of works to an
exhibition is a simple matter of personal favour, is shared by
all foreigners--and I fear by many English people--and places me
at this time of year in much and often painful embarrassment. So
robust is this belief, that those who, having applied to me,
fail to find their works on our walls ascribe their absence to
personal unfriendliness or discourtesy on my part, or, to say
the least, to lukewarmness. As a matter of fact each work of art
is admitted or rejected by a separate vote of the Council, and
that in complete ignorance (except where authorship _saute aux
yeux_) of the artist's name. This applies equally to English
painters and foreign artists who reside here. In regard,
however, to foreigners sending _from abroad_, whilst the vote is
taken in the same way, admission is much more difficult. We have
so many Anglo-foreign painters who live amongst us that, our
Exhibition not being international, we can only admit a very
limited number of really prize works. These works are therefore
brought before us separately, and a small number of them
selected, according to the space we have to deal with; I myself
as a rule dissuade my foreign friends from sending except in
cases where their merit is really very great; this may be Miss
---- case; you will best know. I am quite sure, my dear Mrs.
Kemble, that you do not doubt the pleasure it would give me to
serve you in the person of your friend, and will not
misinterpret these lengthy explanations.
And now I have a favour to ask of you. On Wednesday the 26th, at
3 o'clock in the afternoon, Joe will, I hope, play at my studio,
and with him Miss Janotha and Piatti; Henschel will, I hope,
sing. Will you give me the great pleasure of seeing you amongst
my friends on that occasion?--Believe me always, yours very
truly,
FRED LEIGHTON.
On December 10, 1879, Leighton delivered his first address to the
students of the Royal Academy--one of the finest of the many fine
achievements of Leighton's life. "Purely practical and technical
matters" he put aside to look into a wider and deeper question, that
of the position of Art in its relation to the world at large in the
present and in the past time, in order to gather something of its
prospects in the future. If the question why Leighton held
indisputably the great position he did were asked me by one who for a
first time had heard his name, I should be inclined to answer,
"Because he contained within him the combined powers to execute
completely the art which he created, and to think out and feel such
profound, sympathetic, and wise truths as those to be found in this
address."[60]
Among the large number of appreciative letters Leighton received were
the following.
Millais wrote:--
2 PALACE GATE, KENSINGTON,
_December 11, 1879_.
DEAR LEIGHTON,--I was suffering all yesterday with tooth-ache,
otherwise I would have attended the distribution last night. The
ceremony is always most interesting to me, awakening as it does
many anxious and happy recollections. My object in writing to
you is to say I have read your address, which I think so
beautiful, true, and _useful_ that I cannot but obey an impulse
of congratulating you upon it. For some time past I have been
putting down notes on Art which some day may be put into form,
and I find we are thinking precisely in the same way. I have
used identical words in what I have written to those you
delivered yesterday.
The exponents of Art surround it in such a cloud of mystery
that it is a real gain when a practical authority is able to say
something definite and clear the way.--Yours sincerely,
J.E. MILLAIS.
His poet-friend wrote:--
WOODBERRIE, LOUGHTON, ESSEX,
_December 11, 1883_.
MY DEAR SIR FREDERIC,--Have any of the multitude of men who love
you ever called you Chrysostom? It seems so natural after
reading yesterday's address. Will it be published by itself and
obtainable in some handier form than the broadsheet of the
_Times_? I want it as part of the education of my daughter, who
now, at sixteen, is beginning to take a new interest in
whatsoever things are lovely and of good report, and I want it
for myself, for in its lovely suggestiveness and exquisite
English I could often find refreshment when I wanted (and
needed) to "travel in the realms of gold," and forget my own
invalided personality under the magic of such guidance.
My wife desires me to say a word of gracious remembrance to you,
and I am ever, faithfully yours,
ROBIN ALLEN.
Mr. Briton Riviere:
FLAXLEY, 82 FINCHLEY ROAD, N.W.,
_December 11, 1879_.
DEAR SIR FREDERIC,--After hearing your admirable address last
night, I came home in despair, for what little basis of thought
is contained in my lectures (more especially in the second one)
is built chiefly upon two or three of the lines of argument that
you have already expressed so beautifully: Sincerity in the
student--The effect of his own time upon him--That time in its
relation to the time of the Old Masters, and the temper of mind
in which the Old Masters should be studied; on these points my
lectures are but a feeble echo of what I heard last night.
My first thought was to change my whole line of battle, and
re-write them, but the extreme limitation of my powers of work
would make this too great a sacrifice. To throw them up
altogether, which I should much like, is impossible, for I am
pledged to the Academy to do my best.
Clearly, I must go on, but I shall do so more easily now that I
have explained my position, so that if any one who hears me
should tell you that my lectures were only a parody of what you
had already said so well, you will believe that it has been the
misfortune and not the fault of yours very truly,
BRITON RIVIERE.
Don't trouble to answer this.
Matthew Arnold:--
ATHENAEUM CLUB, PALL MALL,
_April 19, 1880_.
MY DEAR LEIGHTON,--You have been _better_ than your word, for I
see you have made me the actual possessor of your "address."
From the glance I have already taken at it, I see that I shall
both like it and you with it; but of this I might have been sure
beforehand. A thousand thanks, and believe me, always sincerely
yours,
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
The scheme Leighton formed, when first considering the duty among all
others he undertook,[61] of addressing the students at the biennial
meetings, was begun and continued in the nine addresses he gave, but
unfortunately it could not be completed, a fact he sorely regretted
when discussing the question with me three months before his death. On
December 10, 1879, "The position of Art in the World" was the subject.
In 1881, "Relation of Art to Time, Place, and Racial Conditions;
Underlying Mystery of its Growth and Decay." In 1885, "Summary of
Foregoing Lecture." In 1887, "Art in Mediaeval and Modern Italy." In
1889, "Relation of Artistic Production to Surrounding Conditions
considered in reference to Spain." In 1891, "The Art of France: its
uninterrupted development; its wide field; eminent achievement in
Architecture; the Gothic style." In 1893, "The Art of Germany: its
high qualities; deficient AEsthetic Inspiration." The tenth was to have
consisted, Leighton told me, in a summing up of the nine former
addresses, in order to prove how they had affected the past and
present condition of Art in England. To any thoughtful artist these
utterances, delivered by so great and accomplished an authority,
cannot fail to prove profoundly interesting and invaluable as
references, on account of the sound knowledge and the absolutely
reliable quality of the facts given; but it may be doubted whether the
more informative matter, contained in the six later lectures, suited
Leighton's style of oratory so happily as did the more abstract
quality of the three first. There appeared to be too many names
crowded into the comparatively short time which Leighton allotted to
himself for the delivery of these discourses, for the normal taking-in
power of an audience; the very finished rhetoric, moreover, in which
the enormous amount of information contained in each was disclosed,
did not seem quite appropriate to their condensed form. In
conversation I have heard Leighton far more convincing, on the same
subjects as those he treated in the last six discourses. The same
intense sense of the duty he felt to do the thing as completely as it
was possible, which he evinced in painting, cropped up again in his
oratory, no less than the intense modesty--which would not recognise
how great he could be if he relaxed all effort, and was simply
himself.
Mr. Briton Riviere, in the notes he furnishes for this book, writes:--
"Those perhaps sometimes too perfectly built-up sentences, of
which his admirable addresses and speeches were formed, were the
outcome of this same quality of mind. One of his most intimate
friends, when we were talking about the mental strain occasioned
by these, once said to me: 'Leighton would never get over a
slight lapse of grammar,' and I can believe it. The accidental
was hateful to him when considered in reference to his own work
of any kind, though probably no one knew better than he did its
value in a work of art; but, as Watts deplored, he never would
use it or admit it into his own pictures. This quality and its
strain upon him was illustrated by an accident which occurred at
his last R.A. Banquet speech, the last he ever made, and which
gained immensely from the fact that in one place he forgot for a
moment the next sentence, and came to a pause (as he told me
afterwards), in fear that he had broken down altogether; but his
suspense, painful as it must have been to him, looked perfectly
natural and spontaneous, and gave to his speech that touch of
something which his better remembered periods did not express so
well. This system of speaking entirely from memory added much to
the constant strain of his Academy work. He had what he called a
'topical memory,' viz. he remembered the place of each word in
his written speech and used to read it off in the air with
never-failing accuracy, but did so always with the belief that a
forgotten sentence would shipwreck the whole. If he would have
been content now and then to lapse from this high pitch of the
accuracy he aimed at in all his work, few could have reached a
safer or higher standard spontaneously, as he proved in the
Royal Academy, General Assembly, and Council meetings, when he
never failed to speak admirably on the spur of the moment; and
his summing up of a debate there on any subject was invariably
marked by the same elegance and cleverness as his prepared
speeches, but with more vitality and flexibility, which,
however, never led him into anything that was not almost
fastidiously exact and precise. I have always felt that no one
who had heard only his elaborately prepared speeches knew his
real power as a speaker."
There rang out perhaps, at times, just a note reminding one of the
German pedant in these discourses--a note singularly discordant when
sounding together with an ornate diction; but this was only heard when
Leighton was not deeply moved by his subject; when, on the other hand,
the not over-tutored, bigger instinctive self had full sway, as, in
the subjects he chose for the first three discourses, the glowing
style harmonised most rightly as the appropriate language for the
earnest and lofty feeling in the thought. If, as suggested above, it
is only facts and information of an historical character which words
have to convey, much eloquence and an ornate style seems
inappropriate. Each mood is obviously best expressed when the style is
adjusted to it by an intuitive instinct. Leighton, though possessing
abnormally flexible and subtle aesthetic instincts when he allowed
himself to be his natural self, seemed at times to force himself into
a theoretic rigidity when he was at his lessons. And all his official
duties he viewed as lessons, which, after he left his easel, it was
his first duty in life to learn to perform as correctly as he could.
But whatever criticisms may be made on the style of the later
discourses, students desiring to possess something more than a merely
provincial knowledge of the special power of the magnates in whose
work culminates the great Art of the world, should surely not neglect
to possess themselves of the wisdom to be acquired from these
discourses.
Throughout their pages are to be found most suggestive passages,
inspiring new thoughts and, to any but experts, new facts on vitally
interesting art matters. For instance, take the description of
Velasquez:--
"For a long period Italian painting did not cease to enjoy the
favour of the Court; it ceased, however, towards the beginning
of the seventeenth century to exercise that paralysing influence
which had marked its first advent, and the ground was cleared
for a new impulse from within. At this conjuncture a man of
commanding genius and fearless initiative was given to Spain in
the person of Diego Velasquez. It may perhaps have surprised you
that with such a name before my mind I should have spoken of
Zurbaran, a man so vastly his inferior in the painter's gift, as
perhaps the most representative of Spanish artists. I have done
so because beyond any other artist he sums up in himself, as I
have pointed out to you, all the complex elements of the Spanish
genius. In Velasquez, Spanish as he is to the finger-tips, this
comprehensiveness is not found. Of Velasquez all was Spanish,
but Zurbaran was all Spain.
"Viewed simply as a painter, the great Sevillian was, as I have
just said, vastly the superior of the Estremeno. He was in more
intimate touch with Nature, and none, perhaps, have equalled the
swift magic of his brush. On the other hand, depth of feeling,
poetry, imagination were refused to him. The painter of the
'Lanzas,' the 'Hilanderas,' the 'Meninas'--works in their kind
unapproached in Art by any other man--painted also, be it
remembered, the 'Coronation of the Virgin' and the 'Mars' of the
Madrid Gallery--types of prosaic treatment. In one work, indeed,
Religion seems for a moment to have winged his pencil; but
striking and pathetic as is his famous 'Crucifixion,' it does
not equal in poignancy and imaginative grasp the presentment of
the same subject by Zurbaran in Seville. But if we miss in
Velasquez the higher gifts of the imagination, we find him also
free from all those blemishes of extravagance which we have so
often noted in this land of powerful impulses unrestrained by
tact. Whatever gifts may have been refused to Velasquez, in his
grave simplicity he is unsurpassed. If fancy seldom lifts him
above the level of intimate daily things, neither does she
obstruct for him with purple wings the white light of sober
truth. In days in which the young Herrera could find favour; in
a country in which Churriguera was possible, and euphuism was
applauded, he never overstepped the modesty of Nature, nor
forgot in Art the value of reticent control. I have not here to
follow his career, nor the evolution of his unique and dazzling
genius. Still less need I, before young artists of the present
day, dwell on the wizardry and the luscious fascination of the
brush of this most modern of the old masters. I will only, in
conclusion, touch briefly on one or two points that are of
interest, and one that is, perhaps, of warning.
"First, I would notice the purity and decorum of his art; a
decorum not, I think, due to the characteristically Spanish laws
under which the Inquisition visited with heavy penalties every
semblance even of impurity in a work of art, but to a spirit
dwelling in the people itself, of which those laws were but the
somewhat exaggerated expression. It may be worth while also to
note that yet another virtue of the Spaniards is, in one of his
works, reflected in an unexpected manner, namely, their
sobriety. It is a curious thing that in a certain class of
Spanish literature a peculiar relish is shown for the portraying
of moral squalor and the grovelling criminality of social
outcasts. In Spanish Art, on the other hand, the picturesqueness
alone of low life seems to have sought expression. You know what
gentle Murillo made of his melon-eating beggar boys. Again, you
saw not long ago upon these walls, in the 'Water-Carrier of
Seville,' how at the outset of his career Velasquez turned his
thoughts to subjects drawn from humble life, and you know how to
the end he dwelt with peculiar gusto on the fantastic
physiognomy of the privileged buffoons, dwarfs, and _hombres de
placer_ who haunted the Palace in his day. You know further that
one of the most powerful works painted by him before reality of
atmospheric effect had become his chief preoccupation, and when
he sought exclusively after truth of character, a picture known
as 'Los Borrachos,' represents a group of drunkards doing homage
to Bacchus. It is a work of the most naked realism. Bacchus
(Dionysos!), showing his repulsive vulgarity (what a blank to
Velasquez was the poetic side of classic myths), is surrounded
by a circle of kneeling rascals, rude and ragged enough, and
supposed, no doubt, to be carousing; but here is the strange
peculiarity of this work--in spite of all the accessories of a
revel, and the flash of grinning teeth, we are unable to
persuade ourselves that any one of the disreputable crew could
ever be _drunk_. Imagine the subject treated by a Fleming.
"And now, though I am loth to touch one leaf of the laurels of
so dazzling and so great an artist, I cannot pass in silence a
circumstance which must be weighed in estimating Velasquez as a
man, and which is not without bearing on his art. The virtues of
his race, as we have seen, purified his work and gave it
dignity; a Spanish foible, though it could not dim his genius,
cramped, no doubt, and curtailed its production--namely, a
tendency to subordinate everything to the pursuit of royal
favour. I said a Spanish foible; for a superstitious rendering
up of will and conscience to the sovereign, such as is, I
believe, without example, had long been a growing characteristic
of the Spaniard. On a memorable occasion Gonzalo de Cordoba
himself, one of the noblest figures recorded in Spanish
history--a man of a mind so fearless that he was bold to rebuke
Pope Borgia himself face to face in the Vatican for the scandals
of his life--did not scruple to break, in deference to what he
considered this higher duty of obedience to his king, his solemn
pledge and oath to the unfortunate young Duke of Calabria. So
all but divine did majesty appear to the Spaniards, that
divinity and majesty became almost as one in their eyes, and
they spoke, in all solemnity, as 'Su Majestad,' not only of the
Divine persons of the Trinity, but also of the sacrificial
wafer. The prevalence of this feeling must plead to some extent
in mitigation of the tenacity with which Velasquez
canvassed--with success, alas!--to obtain at Court a post of an
onerous and wholly prosaic character--the office of 'Aposentador
Mayor,' a sort of purveyor and quartermaster, who, when his
Majesty moved from one place to another, had to convey, to
house, to feed, not the sovereign only, but all his suite. A
post demanding all his attention, says Polomino, who goes on to
deplore that this exalted office (which he has just told us any
one could fill) should have deprived the world of so many
samples of the painter's genius. We shall agree with our
sententious friend, not, perhaps, in the satisfaction he derived
from the honour conferred, as he imagines, on his calling, but
in his sorrow over the loss we have sustained! And in the sight
of canvases in which the execution of a sketch is carried out on
the full scale of life we shall at once bow before the product
of a splendid genius, and regret the signs of haste, the
evidence of too scanty leisure, by which its expression has been
marred. Truly it has been said, 'Art requires the whole
man.'"[62]
Again, the seventh discourse is replete with inspiring suggestions
about French architecture,[63] and in the last discourse the
description of Albert Duerer is one which, in a few lines, gives a
complete and vividly interesting setting to the great name.
"Albert Duerer may be regarded as _par excellence_ the typical
German artist--far more so than his great contemporary Holbein.
He was a man of a strong and upright nature, bent on pure and
high ideals; a man ever seeking, if I may use his own
characteristic expression, to make known through his work the
mysterious treasure that was laid up in his heart; he was a
thinker, a theorist, and, as you know, a writer; like many of
the great artists of the Renaissance, he was steeped also in the
love of science. His work was in his own image; it was, like
nearly all German art, primarily ethic in its complexion; like
all German art it bore traces of foreign influence--drawn, in
his case, first from Flanders and later from Italy. In his work,
as in all German art, the national character asserted itself
above every trammel of external influence. Superbly
inexhaustible as a designer, as a draughtsman he was powerful,
thorough, and minute to a marvel, but never without a certain
almost caligraphic mannerism of hand, wanting in spontaneous
simplicity--never broadly serene. In his colour he was rich and
vivid, not always unerring as to his harmonies, not alluring in
his execution--withal a giant."
When the last addresses were given Leighton was getting very tired.
The wheels were running down--vitality was waning. The great mental
machine had begun to work more mechanically. We trace this in the
manner in which he tackled his last discourse. While writing it at
Perugia he wrote to his elder sister:--
PERUGIA, _Thursday, October 12, 1893_.
You have misconstrued my knee; I have no _pain_ in it, at most
occasionally a dull ache in the muscles and a slight soreness in
the joint; but it is an incapacitating and depressing nuisance,
and it won't move on. (I am writing near a window opening on to
a clear, star-bright sky; far below, in the _paese_, I hear the
tinkle of a wandering, nocturnal mandoline--how I like it!) You
do me the honour to appreciate my having, during my recent
precipitate odyssey, visited thirty towns in thirty days, noting
things of which I had already accurate knowledge _d'avance_; but
I can "go one better" than that: _ten_ of the towns were
_absolutely new_ to me, and of the whole subject on which I am
preaching, I knew as good as nothing when you last saw me. I
suspect that, in spite of a lack of memory which _baffles
belief_, I have a certain "uptaking" knack. My preachment will
bore you, but you will (if you read it) detect an _ensemble_;
but, for goodness' sake, _zitti!_ They'll think, when they hear
the P.R.A., that, Lor' bless him! he'd known it all his life.
Nevertheless, enough for the day, &c. Best love to
Gussy.--Affect. bro.,
FRED.
I remember--when my husband and I were sitting with him one afternoon
after his return home that autumn--his saying, "I feel distinctly I
have dropped one step down off of the ladder," and it was truly about
that time that his doctor, Doctor Roberts, discerned the beginning of
the disease which proved fatal. Already in 1888 he wrote:--
"The reasons which have now for a good many years impelled me to
decline any 'public utterances' outside Burlington House have
increased in weight and force as life and strength wanes, and as
demands on me grow in every direction. I am sometimes asked to
speak in public, not only in London, but all over the country,
and in all cases the demand is grounded on strong claims in so
far as I am an 'official' artist. Assent once is assent
always--assent in half the cases would mean the _gravest_ injury
to my _work_, and I am a workman first and an official
afterwards. Things have their humorous side, for those who press
me most are sometimes those who on other occasions most
earnestly assure me that I '_do too much_.' How tired I am of
hearing it."
The speeches at the yearly banquets of the Royal Academy were
extraordinary _tours de force_. Wherever Leighton took the lead--and
he was seldom anywhere when he did not take the lead,[64]--he raised
the tone of the proceedings, and convinced the outside world, no less
than those taking a part in them, that the matter in hand was
important and essentially worth doing. Personally I have always felt
that the finished form of Leighton's diction tended rather to hide
than to explain the real nature of the power which had this
vitalising, elevating influence. This influence emanated, I believe,
from the greatness of his "magnificent intellect" (to use Watts'
words) being united with extraordinary will-force invariably employed
in the service of the principles in which he had a profound faith. It
was his persistent loyalty to these principles--backed by this
abnormal will-force, giving it extra weight--which lifted Leighton's
work in all directions on to so distinguished a level--and not--in the
case of his speeches--his rounded periods, or his power over words, or
his gift of facility in grasping a subject, though the Banquet
speeches are also remarkable on account of the versatility he
displayed in grasping many subjects from the point of view of the
expert. Whether it was the Army, the Navy, Politics, Music--whatever,
in fact, was the affair of the moment, he proposed the toast from what
might be called the inside of the question, not merely treating his
text as a matter of form.[65]
On asking Gladstone to the Banquet of 1880, Leighton received the
following characteristic answer:--
MY DEAR PRESIDENT,--I have received your letter with mixed
feelings. You do me great honour, and I must obey you. But I
long for the return of the good old times, lying within the long
range of my memory, when the dinners of the Academy did not
suffer the contamination of political toasts, and kept us all
for three precious hours in purer air. Can you tell me when the
practice was changed? I am not, I think, under the dominion of a
pleasant delusion.--Yours most faithfully,
W.E. GLADSTONE.
In 1883 Leighton found it impossible to continue his duties as
Lieutenant-Colonel of the 20th Middlesex (Artists) Volunteers, which
post he had held since 1876, and he therefore resigned. He was then
made Hon. Colonel and holder of the Volunteer Decoration.[66]
A few years later he made the following speech at a dinner given by
his Corps, in response to a toast proposed to himself:--
We live in times so hustling and breathless, times in which so
much happens in so short a space, that a few years seem to
divide men and habits like a deep gulf, and I feel that in the
eyes of many of you the toast that your C.O. has invited you in
such friendly terms to drink is one possessing an almost
antiquarian flavour interest; the more grateful therefore am I
for the cordial response with which, not, I hope, solely in a
spirit of discipline, but from a more human point of view, you
have given to the call of Colonel Edis.
The sight of the old uniform recalls to me, in a vivid manner, a
period when not only my years, but my circumferencial inches,
were fewer, during which it was my pride, first in one grade,
then successively in others, from the ranks to the command, to
take my share in the doings of and the life of what I hope I may
call, without egotism, one of the finest corps in the Volunteer
service. I have now for some years laid by the coat, to be
furbished up only for these annual gatherings, not without
misgivings as to my power of getting into it; but I have not
laid by, nor shall I lay by while I have life, my deep interest
and my high respect for that great defensive force of which it
is the sign, and which, having sprung into existence in a
moment of emergency and national excitement, has shown through
over more than a quarter of a century that it requires no
excitement to sustain it, and is fed by no transitory fires.
But whilst I watch this great sign of national vitality with
unchanging interest, there is of course an inmost corner of my
heart in which that national movement appears to me clad in grey
and silver, and the old corps still sits in the warmest place;
praise of its performance is always to me the most grateful
praise; strictures on its shortcomings, if like other human
things it has any, will always find me sensitive, and the
account which your excellent Colonel furnishes on these
occasions of your year's growth, comes home to me more than
other like utterances. Gentlemen, I have named your energetic
and efficient commanding officer; there is this year a special
reason why his name should be on my lips; he is about shortly to
acquire by length of service the full colonelcy of which his
long devotion to the cause makes him so worthy a recipient; and
I should wish before sitting down to offer him an old comrade's
hearty congratulation, and the expression of my confident hope
that his advanced rank will only confirm him in his loyal and
faithful efforts to promote the honour of the corps to which he,
more fortunate than I, is still privileged to belong as an
active member.
In 1894, on the occasion of feting his friend Joseph Joachim and
presenting the gift to the great master of a Stradivarius violin and
bow from his friends, in recognition of the fiftieth anniversary of
his first performance in London, Leighton made the following speech:--
1894.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--It was necessary that the motives and
feelings which have drawn us together to-night should find brief
expression on somebody's lips; and, in obedience to a command
which has been laid on me by this Committee, I have to ask you
to accept me, for a few moments, as your mouthpiece. Of the
varied duties which life lays on us, there are some which we
perform in simple discharge of conscience and with little joy;
some, if few, into the discharge of which we can pour all our
hearts; and such a duty is this which I have risen to perform.
I have said that I shall only ask your attention for a few
moments, and you will feel with me the fitness of brevity; for
besides that, in every case, taste imposes restraint in praise
of those who are present before us, long drawn and redundant
eulogy would clash strangely with that rare simplicity which is
one of the qualities by which Joachim, the Man, compels the
esteem of all whose fortune it is to know him. But there would
be in it, I think, also a further deeper-lying incongruity, for
we know that Joachim, the Artist, has risen to the heights he
occupies, perhaps alone, by fixing his constant gaze on high
ideals, and lifting and sustaining his mind in a region above
the shifting fickle atmosphere of praise or blame. Well, it is
now fifty years since he took his first step along the upward
path, which he has trodden in wholeness of heart and singleness
of purpose from earliest boyhood to mellow middle age. During
these fifty years he has not only ripened to the full his
splendid gifts as an interpreter, ever interpreting the noblest
works in the noblest manner, leading his hearers to their better
comprehension; not only marked his place in the front ranks of
living composers by works instinct with fire and imagination;
but shown us also, as a man, how much high gifts are enhanced by
modesty, and how good a thing to see is the life of an Artist
who has never paltered with the dignity of his Art.
Deep appreciation of these titles to respect and admiration has,
as you know, led in Germany, the country of his adoption and his
home, to an enthusiastic celebration of this, the fiftieth year
of his artistic career; and we, his English friends, living in a
country which we hope, nay, believe, is, after his own, not the
least dear to him, have felt strongly impelled to express to him
also in some form our gratitude, our sympathy, and our esteem.
It has seemed to your Committee that these sentiments could not
take a more fitting outward shape than that of the instrument
over which he is lord: such an instrument, signed with the
famous name of Stradivarius, and, as I am told, not unworthy of
his fame, flanked with a bow the work of Tourte, and once the
property of Kiesenwetter--such a fiddle and such a bow I now
offer to him in your name. Its sensitive and well-seasoned
shell will acknowledge and respond to the hand of the master,
and the souls of many great musicians will, we hope, often speak
through it to spellbound hearers. But we nourish another
hope--the hope that, through the great waves of melody that
shall roll forth from it under his compelling bow, a still small
voice may now and again be interfused which, reaching his heart
through his ears, shall speak to it of the many friends who, in
spirit or in the body, are gathered round him affectionately
to-night.
In 1888 Leighton delivered the superb Address at the Art Congress held
at Liverpool on December 3 (see Appendix). No Life of this great man
would be complete were his utterances on this occasion not given in
full, for therein is found his creed on Art, and the records of those
principles on which it was founded, expounded with clear force, fine
analysis, and, above all, with supreme courage. The subject, moreover,
as touching England's condition respecting Art, is one directly
affecting English readers.
A matter of interest to the general Art world came under discussion at
the Council meetings of the Academy in the winter of 1879 and 1880,
namely, whether women were to be admitted as members of their body. A
correspondence took place between Leighton and the late Mr. Henry
Wells, R.A., on the subject. Leighton's personal inclination was
certainly for admitting women into the body of the elect, as I know
from conversations he had with me on the subject. He invariably sought
to extend all art privileges to those who were, as artists, worthy to
receive them. He told me, however, that the majority of votes against
the inroad of women would be given as having regard to a question of
convenience rather than to one of principle, namely, the difficulty
the Academicians foresaw in admitting only one or two lady artist
Academicians to the yearly Banquets, and the greater difficulty of
extending invitations to lady guests.[67]
The following letters from Leighton to Mr. Wells give an insight into
the kind of work which his office of President entailed, and of the
characteristically thorough manner in which Leighton fulfilled them.
_Thursday Evening, 1879 or 1880._
DEAR WELLS,--I have noticed during my last two sittings at your
studio, that, whenever the deeply interesting subject of our
Academy appeared on the tapis, it stood in the way of your work,
and I have therefore purposely abstained, as you no doubt
remarked, from going beyond the merest surface in the
discussion of any of the points on which we have touched. I felt
that the sittings I gave you being so few and so scantily
measured out, the least I could do was not, wittingly, to make
you lose your time. That is to say, I did not _tell_ you to-day
orally what I now _write_, namely, my impression on your
proposed question concerning the Chantrey purchases. The
characteristic straightforwardness and loyalty with which you
wished me to be informed on the point beforehand will not permit
me to be silent in regard to your view. I have looked with the
greatest care into the extract from the will which we all have,
and have given the matter that thought which is due to your
earnest conscientiousness, and I have satisfied myself that the
General Assembly is wholly without a _locus standi_ in claiming
to control the expenditure of the Chantrey trust moneys in any
way whatever; those moneys never pass into its hands or come
under its cognisance; they are paid into the hands of the
president and treasurer, against their receipt, and are dealt
with solely by the president and council for the time being. An
attempt, therefore, on the part of the General Assembly to
assume control in this matter is in my view _out of order_, and
it would therefore be out of order to ask or answer a question
based, as yours is, on that assumption. I think you will find
this view in harmony with the opinion of the body; if it is
largely challenged, I shall postpone the answer till I have
taken a legal opinion, as the point is very important. Here are
my cards on the table.--In haste, yours sincerely,
FRED LEIGHTON.
_Private._]
_Monday._
DEAR WELLS,--The usual stress of business has prevented me till
now from thanking you for your note and valuable information; I
shall, with great interest, turn to the passages you allude to
as soon as I get a good opportunity, and what I read will have
the greatest weight with me when I vote again on a purchase. It
would not, however, touch my point in regard to the _General
Assembly_, which can only interfere with a past purchase if it
can be shown to be illegal; this can, of course, only be
established by legal authority, and I am, myself, sorry that
your first resolution does not run thus: That the President be
requested to consult high legal authority as to whether such and
such purchases are barred by the will of Sir F. Ch. If your
misgivings on that head are shared by a majority the thing would
pass immediately and undiscussed, almost.
As concerns your motion on the pension resolution, I own to much
misgiving; _I should not dream of alluding to this had you not
yourself taken me aside about it the other day._ I am so far at
one with you in principle that I feel, I can't say how deeply,
that it is our paramount duty to interpret in the largest and
most elevated sense our duty to the art of the country that we
may be worthy in the eyes of the enlightened portion of the
community of our high place, and that it is equally incumbent on
us to keep our personal interests vigilantly in sub-ordination.
I think that one of the present resolutions militates against
this last view, and I need not conceal from you that it has not
my sympathy. I am, however, very strongly of opinion that the
form of your opposition to it will not be supported, and that in
your desire for a logical comprehensiveness, you will fail of
your end, which by simple direct opposition to the particular
measure on the principle you have already enunciated and
explained, you might _very probably_, I believe, achieve. I need
not, I think, assure you, my dear Wells, that nothing is further
from my thoughts than any _interference_ with a member's
freedom; indeed, on that head my views are known to you; but I
can't refrain from saying thus much to give you an opportunity
of quietly thinking matters over (_don't answer this_) before
Wednesday. After all, you want primarily to get rid of paragraph
6, not to ensure a dialectical triumph. If the alternative is
between your Committee and the resolution as it stands, I feel
absolutely convinced that you will be left in a very cold
minority; but if you point out that paragraph 6 takes our
bounties off the ground of necessity, our only tenable ground,
in fact commutes a _bounty_ into an unconditional _claim_ (of a
formidable pecuniary nature, too), you will march in, I can't
help thinking, with flying colours.
Don't, I repeat, be at the trouble to answer this expression of
the opinion of,--Yours sincerely,
FRED LEIGHTON.
_Monday, February 1, (?) 1881._
DEAR WELLS,--Since receiving your letter I have been so
absolutely engrossed with business and work that I have not had
time till now to answer it. I am sincerely glad you have asked
for a little modification in the terms of the Lucy petition;
meanwhile I have written to Gladstone, and my letter has been
acknowledged with a promise to note its contents.
In regard to your Chantrey resolution, I feel that, after the
manner of very busy men, I have written in haste and not made
myself quite clear. I should like, first, to remove one
apprehension which you seem to have entertained; however
strongly I may be convinced of the correctness of my own view on
the matter under discussion, I cannot too emphatically say that
as long as the points at issue were still _sub judice_ I should
not countenance a purchase which should assume my view to be the
right one; but no such postponement as would lead to this
dilemma is to be feared; what I propose is this: as soon as ever
we have closed the discussion on the schools, and whilst they
are being printed in their amended form for final consideration,
therefore, on Friday next, if we get through on Wednesday, or
failing that on the 22nd or 23rd of February, the resolutions of
Council will be put on the table in their rotation; as, however,
the next step in the Chantrey affair is to merely _hear_ my
answer to your memorandum, and as I understand that discussion
on it will not be expected till members shall have had it to
consider at their leisure, I will read it and lay it on the
table _before_ I take up the resolutions of Council which stand
on the paper before it, so that when it comes up for final
discussion, presumably in the first days of March, it can be
discussed and voted on with full mastery of the subject. It is
on the agenda paper of THAT _meeting_ that your affirmative
motion will stand; it does not come into force till then, since
it is contingent on the effect produced on your mind by my
answer of Friday (or of the next meeting after).
With respect to Redgrave's motion, it may lead to a technical
"censure" of the Council; but there are censures and censures,
and nobody will suppose, certainly I never dreamt, that you
meant to imply moral obliquity to us in regard to what we have
done. I have not a word to object to what you advance about the
right of complaint, but it does not exactly cover the case: if
you caught us, say, taking our friends to the Exhibition (or
ourselves) on Sunday, a matter on which no two opinions are
admissible, then "a complaint" would be in its place; but in the
matter of payment to Treasurer, two opinions may and do exist,
and they can only be measured against one another by a vote, and
a vote can only be taken on a motion.
Lastly, as to the new codification committee, I think with you,
_in strictest confidence_, that ---- was not a good choice; but
he was chosen in the usual manner by a majority of votes: that
your labours were not remunerated in the usual manner is an
oversight, which, of course, must and shall be set right. There
seems altogether, and your letter corroborates that impression,
to have been much vagueness about the doings of the Committee
_as a Committee_, though, as usual, much zealous work on your
part. I do not gather that attendances were entered in a book,
which is the machinery by which payment is generally regulated,
and the Committee having lapsed without reporting to the Council
on its labours (being a _sub-committee_ of the Council of 1878,
it lapsed by a natural death with that Council), the whole thing
had fallen out of notice. I hope that the old sub-committee will
put in their claims, which will very certainly be satisfied. The
codification has frequently been in my mind, for I consider it
of very great importance, but as it is my impression that I am
considered to drive the work of the Academy full hard as
it is, I have hesitated to impose more labours on my colleagues,
even though I am always ready to share them.--Sincerely yours,
FRED LEIGHTON.
[Illustration: "ELIJAH IN THE WILDERNESS." 1879]
[Illustration: SKETCH FOR "ELIJAH IN THE WILDERNESS." 1879
Leighton House Collection]
[Illustration: "NERUCCIA." 1879
By permission of Mrs. Lees]
[Illustration: "THE BATH OF PSYCHE." 1890
National Gallery of British Art (Tate Gallery)]
_Tuesday Morning_,
2 HOLLAND PARK ROAD, KENSINGTON, W.,
_March 18, 1884_.
DEAR WELLS,--Thank you for your letter received yesterday, which
only lack of time prevented me from answering at once. I am
happy to say that Richmond cheerfully acceded to my wish in
regard to clauses 6 and 7. I do not think with Calderon, who has
written to me, that the words of a man so high-minded as
Richmond will indispose members in this matter, and, though I
feel the importance of raising no prejudice against the proposal
as keenly as ever, still wish him to initiate it. It is, I agree
with you, a pity that the question of the retiring pensions must
come off first; but that is, I fear, quite unavoidable, and it
connects itself with the very first resolution. I assure you, my
dear Wells, that I _see_ the bearing of all you say on this head
as plainly as possible, and have done so all along; but it does
not prevail with me, because it does not cover the whole ground,
and because I do not anticipate the dangers for which you think
it might be used as a precedent.
In view of my own personal painful position in this matter, I
shall _ask_ the Assembly _not_ to ratify the clause which
affects _me_.--In great haste, yours sincerely,
FRED LEIGHTON.
Leighton's official life, as understood and carried out by him,
entailed infinitely more strain and occupation than can be described
in these pages, but, notwithstanding, unless the call away from his
easel was imperative, he kept certain hours in the day sacred to his
art. These were from 9 A.M. till noon, and from 1 P.M. till 4. It was
only in the off hours that he got through his other labours, which he
performed, nevertheless, with most assiduous conscientiousness.
Among his duties outside the Academy were those at the British Museum.
Mr. H.A. Grueber, Keeper of the Coins and Medals, writes: "Sir
Frederic Leighton was elected a Trustee of the British Museum on May
14, 1881. He was an active member of the Standing Committee, who
practically manage the affairs of the Museum, and he took great
interest in the place. He was also a member of the Sub-committees on
Buildings, on Antiquities, Prints and Drawings, also of those on Coins
and Medals."
In the first R.A. Exhibition after his election, three pictures of the
eight Leighton sent have, I think, a special interest--"Elijah in the
Wilderness" (the picture into which he said he put more of himself
than into any other he had painted up to that time); the portrait of
his very dear friend Professor Costa, painted in the previous autumn
at Lerici, and the head "Neruccia." Leighton with Costa studied the
methods used in painting by the Venetians and Correggio, and Costa
wrote the following with reference to them:--
The result of these studies and of the experience of years was
that Leighton and I definitely adopted the following method.
Take a canvas or panel with the whitest possible preparation and
non-absorbent--the drawing of the subject to be done with
precision and indelible. On this seek to model in monochrome so
strongly that it will bear the local colours painted with
exaggeration, and then the grey, which is to be the ground of
all the future half-tones; on this paint the lights, for which
use only white, red, and black, avoiding yellow, and, stabbing
(botteggiando) with the brush while the colour is wet, make the
half-tints tell out from the grey beneath, which should be
thoroughly dry. When all is dry, finish the picture with
scumbles (spegazzi), adding yellow to complete the colour.
Leighton formed his method of painting from these general
maxims, and he painted my portrait at Lerici on these principles
as an experiment, and then in 1878 we adopted the system
definitely. For this portrait he had four sittings--one for the
drawing and the monochrome chiaroscuro, one for the local
colours; then, having covered all with grey, he painted the
lights with red, white, and black, making use of the thoroughly
dried grey beneath for his half-tints. With scumbles
he completed the colour and the modelling.
[Illustration: "THE LIGHT OF THE HAREM." 1880
By kind permission of the Directors of the Leicester Gallery]
[Illustration: "AND THE SEA GAVE UP THE DEAD WHICH WERE IN IT"
Sketch for Complete Design, 1892]
[Illustration: STUDY FOR FIGURE IN FRIEZE, "MUSIC." 1886
Leighton House Collection]
[Illustration: STUDY FOR "ANDROMEDA." 1890
Leighton House Collection]
[Illustration: FROM SKETCH IN CLAY FOR PERSEUS, IN THE PICTURE
"PERSEUS AND ANDROMEDA." 1891]
[Illustration: STUDY FOR FIGURE IN PANEL IN ROYAL
EXCHANGE--"PHOENICIANS BARTERING WITH BRITONS"
Leighton House Collection]
[Illustration: "CYMON AND IPHIGENIA." 1884
The Corporation of Leeds]
[Illustration: STUDY IN COLOUR FOR "CYMON AND IPHIGENIA." 1884
By permission of Mrs. Stewart Hodgson]
[Illustration: STUDY FOR SLEEPING GROUP FOR "CYMON AND
IPHIGENIA"
Given by Lord Leighton to G.F. Watts, O.M., and given by the
latter to the Collection in Leighton House, 1883]
As the exquisite fragments in pencil of cyclamen, bramble and vine
branch,[68] explain most intimately Leighton's genius as a
draughtsman, so this head of Neruccia appears to me, together with one
other work, to explain most explicitly his genius as a painter--a
modeller with the brush. In 1890 Leighton painted "The Bath of
Psyche."[69] The modelling in the torso of this figure, and in the
head of Neruccia, reach the zenith as exemplifying Leighton's
individuality as a painter. They might truly earn for him the
title--Praxiteles of the brush.
It would be tedious for writer and reader alike to describe too
minutely the special characteristics of even the most notable pictures
painted during the seventeen years when Leighton occupied the position
of President of the Royal Academy. Words are but poor interpreters of
painting such as his. Eighty canvases, two statues, and two
designs--the reverse of the Jubilee Medallion, "And the sea gave up
its dead which were in it"--were exhibited at the Royal Academy;
eighteen slighter works at the Suffolk Street, and twenty-three at the
Grosvenor Galleries. On referring to the list in the Appendix it will
be realised how great was the amount of labour involved in the
achievement of many of these works, considering their size, the
complication of their designs, and also the completeness of their
finish. It must also be remembered that Leighton made many hundreds of
studies for his pictures. More especially numerous were these for the
designs "And the sea gave up the dead which were in it," "The Dance,
Decorative Frieze"; "Cymon and Iphigenia"; "Music, a Frieze"; "Design
for the reverse of the Jubilee Medallion," "Captive Andromache,"
"Perseus and Andromeda," "Return of Persephone," "The Garden of the
Hesperides," "Rizpah," "Summer Slumbers," "The Spirit of the Summit,"
"Flaming June," "Phoenicians Bartering with Britons," and "Clytie."
When all these achievements are taken into account it will be realised
that Leighton, to the end, however important his duties outside his
studios, was true to his vocation, and proved himself the "workman
first and the official after."
As a work combining poetic feeling, power of design, and great beauty
in the arrangement of line, while at the same time expressing most
explicitly Leighton's creed of creeds--namely, the ennobling and
elevating influence of beauty in the lives of men and women--"Cymon
and Iphigenia" is perhaps the picture he himself would have chosen as
the most representative among these later works. He chose it as the
one he wished sent to the Berlin Exhibition in 1885. When beginning it
he described to me the moment of the day he wished to catch for the
scene--"the most mysteriously beautiful in the whole twenty-four
hours, when the _merest lip_ of the moon has risen from behind the sea
horizon, and the air is haunted still with the flush of the after-glow
from the sun already hidden in the west."[70]
The study for the group of sleeping figures reproduced here is almost
identical in design with the sketch in plaster from the clay, so
lamentably destroyed when Watts lent it to be cast in bronze
after Leighton's death. Leighton also gave the drawing of this group
to his fellow artist, so enthusiastically did Watts admire it. He, in
his turn, gave it to the Leighton House Collection in the year 1897,
together with the fine painting which Leighton exchanged for his own
portrait, painted about 1863, and which greeted friends as they
mounted the staircase in Leighton House during all the years he lived
in Holland Park Road (see frontispiece to Vol. I.). The study for
"Cymon and Iphigenia" is particularly valuable now as an example of
Leighton's rapid sketches where every touch reflects a mine of
knowledge, because it was put under glass before any of the crispness
of the touch was blurred by rubbing.[71]
[Illustration: "THE SLUGGARD"
From the Bronze Statuette--a direct reproduction from Lord
Leighton's small sketch, 1886. Leighton House Collection]
[Illustration: "NEEDLESS ALARMS"
From Bronze Statuette, 1886. Leighton House Collection]
[Illustration: "THE LAST WATCH OF HERO." 1887]
[Illustration: STUDY IN COLOUR FOR "TRAGIC POETESS." 1890
By permission of Mrs. Stewart Hodgson]
In a letter dated 1886 Watts wrote: "Leighton will carry off all the
honours this year with his ceiling[72] and his two statues."
"An Athlete Awakening from Sleep" (given to the Tate Gallery by Sir
Henry Tate) is generally known as "The Sluggard," a name bestowed on
it by Leighton himself. The victor's garland lies at the feet of the
athlete, a garland which does not preserve the owner from a sad
weariness. Mr. Brock, R.A., in whose studio "An Athlete" was
modelled, executed the fine bust of Leighton which was deposited in
the Academy as Mr. Brock's diploma work.[73]
Sir John Millais admired greatly the other work alluded to in Watts'
letter, "Needless Alarms." Leighton gave him this statuette, and
Millais, desiring to show his gratitude in a tangible form, painted
the picture "Shelling Peas" for Leighton.
In at least fourteen of the eighty pictures shown at the Academy
during the last seventeen years of Leighton's life, there can be
traced an earnest sentiment beyond the "sincerity of emotion" for
beauty which all evince. This feeling is, however, always guarded by a
marked reticence from sentimentalism. "Elijah in the Wilderness,"
"Elisha Raising the Son of the Shunammite," "The Jealousy of Simoetha,
the Sorceress," "The Last Watch of Hero," "Captive Andromache,"
"Return of Persephone," "Rizpah," "Tragic Poetess," "Sibyl,"
"Farewell," "The Spirit of the Summit," "Fatidica," "Lachrymae," and
the last passionate figure of "Clytie." The most popular pictures
Leighton painted during these years appear to be "Sister's Kiss," "The
Light of the Harem" (developed into a picture from the design of a
group in the fresco, "The Industrial Arts of Peace"), "Idyll,"
"Whispers," "Wedded" (now in Australia), "Memories," "Letty,"
"Invocation," "Solitude," "The Bath of Psyche," "Bacchante," "Corinna
of Tanagra," "The Bracelet," "Summer Slumber," "Atalanta," "Flaming
June," and "The Fair Persian" (unfinished). Two sketches in the
Leighton House Collection record effects which greatly fascinated
Leighton in Scotland--"A Pool, Findhorn River," deep tortoiseshell
brown; and "Rocks in the Findhorn," pink and grey enriched by lichen,
and it was in Scotland that the Lynn of Dee inspired the
subject of "Solitude." Leighton described to me the deep impression
this Lynn of Dee had made on him. "It is the veriest note of solitude!
a wonderful spot, full of poetic inspiration." In order to transmit a
vivid record of this sentiment to his canvas, he took a second journey
to the place.[74]
[Illustration: "ATALANTA." 1893
By permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., the owners of the
Copyright]
[Illustration: "FLAMING JUNE." 1895
By permission of Mrs. Watney]
[Illustration: STUDY FOR "FLAMING JUNE." 1895]
[Illustration: "FATIDICA." 1894
By permission of Messrs. T. Agnew & Son, the owners of the
Copyright]
[Illustration: STUDIES FOR "FATIDICA." 1894
Leighton House Collection]
Leighton wrote the following letter to his father when first visiting
Forres, in which he described the "craze" he had for these "dark brown
Scotch rivers":--
ROYAL STATION HOTEL,
FORRES, N.B.
I drove over to Dunkeld (twelve and a half miles) to lunch at
the Millais'; I think the drive one of the most enchanting
things I know, and I was favoured, moreover, by a few of those
divine glimpses of blue and silver sky of which Scotland has the
monopoly (a monopoly which she uses, perhaps, just a trifle too
modestly). This is Forres, as the paper shows you; if Macbeth's
witches really did live in this neighbourhood, it is just as
well they had their hands pretty full, for they would have found
the place uncommonly dull otherwise, especially on the
"Sawbath." On the other hand, the drive to and the walk along
the banks of the Findhorn--the excursion for which one comes
here--is quite delightful, and indeed surpassed my expectations.
I must tell you that I have nothing short of a craze for your
dark brown Scotch (and Irish) rivers, as dark as treacle, and as
clear as a cairngorm. This particular stream contrives to rush
part of the way through fantastic rocks of pink granite--you may
imagine the effect. Here again from the heights over the river I
_ought_ to have seen the sea and the coast of Sutherlandshire;
but the weather was sulky and I had to draw on my imagination
for the view.
In the forenoon I went over by train to Elgin, to see the ruined
cathedral, which is fine, but, like all Scotch architecture that
I have seen, crude and barbaric. As I stood on the platform
before starting, I heard a gruff, good-humoured voice hailing me
from a train on the other side; it was the voice which goes so
well with the rubicund face of the Duke of Cambridge. I was
going by the same train, so he made me get into his compartment;
he was going to Balmoral or Aberfeldie. He was very comic about
B---- and his article in the _Nineteenth Century_--"A fellow who
fouls his own nest is always a d----d bad lot--a d----d bad
lot," with which sentiment I close a d----d long letter.--From
your affectionate son,
FRED.
"Atalanta" may be noted, perhaps, as the strongest work achieved by
Leighton. Here _is_ "enormous power," though shown on a comparatively
small canvas. For noble beauty of the Pheidian type in the grand and
simple pose and modelling of the throat and shoulder, it would be
difficult to find its peer in Modern Art, and yet it was only the
worthy record of the beauty of an English girl. "Flaming June" (a
design first made to decorate as a bas-relief the marble bath on which
the figure in "Summer Slumber" reposes), is equally perfect in the
fine fulness of the modelling, but it lacks the direct simplicity
which gives such a distinguished strength to the "Atalanta." In the
sketch for "Flaming June" reproduced in these pages the pose is better
explained than in the completed picture, the foreshortened line of the
back and shoulder being confused somewhat by the drapery in the
painting.
At the age of twenty-five, in the wing-like petals of a cyclamen,
Leighton had succeeded in securing with the pencil the quality towards
which he aimed from the beginning to the end of his studies--and these
only ended with his life--namely, absolute completeness as far as
human eye and hand can reach completeness in rendering the perfection
of nature's forms. Notably in "Neruccia" and in "Psyche" he reached
that aim with the brush, but in "Atalanta," and in such studies as
those for "Flaming June," "Fatidica," and--imbued with a yet further
interest of dramatic feeling--for "Clytie," his aim was reached with
more freedom and power of touch. The quality of beauty in these works
was no invention of his--only, as has been noted before, a discernment
and echo in the artist's apprehension of nobler truths in nature than
are discovered by the many. They are nobler, because possessing the
germ of life and movement. In all nature's forms, beauty and style
result from the spring and moving on--the development of growth,
whether it requires aeons to develop the form as in mountains, years as
in trees, or only days as in flowers. In the human limbs there is the
further power of varied movement, and in the countenance of varied
expressions. The greatest art stamps a suggestion of this power of
growth and movement into the form and line expressing the facts it
records; and, making it harmonise graciously with perfect structure in
nature, the great artist evolves a thing of beauty. In our northern
climes, and in our modern civilisation, beauty of form and line excite
little genuine emotion. That is reserved for colour, tone, texture,
and, in these very latter days, for the cleverness of the executant.
The greatest opposer Leighton's teaching has had is laziness.
Students will not take the trouble to go through irksome labour to
secure knowledge, therefore they only aim at those qualities which are
made comparatively easy by an emotional preference; and such emotional
preference is rarely excited by form. There are exceptions, such as
Watts, whose greatest artistic emotion was excited when he seized the
beauty and style in Pheidias. He felt also the same enthusiastic
excitement over Leighton's studies, stamped with a like Pheidian
quality of style. Because the modern eye is so often blind to these
qualities, therefore Leighton's work has been disposed of by many as
merely academical and the result solely of taking inordinate pains!
Surely those desirous of any true culture might learn one lesson at
all events of Leighton: the value of Catholicity through learning "to
master what they reject as fully as what they adopt ... the better
motives of men" with whom they are not in sympathy. Catholicity is the
outcome of the best natures, the best understandings, the best
educations. It overrides those subtle egoisms and commercial interests
which so often guide while distorting a true judgment in art matters,
keeping the preferences of the public wriggling about without any
definite instinct or principal on a never truly-convincing dead level.
The mainspring of catholicity in art is a fervent reverence for
nature. All works in which such fervent reverence is found, in
whatever direction it is displayed, are worthy to be admitted into the
fold, whether it be form, colour, or tone in nature's aspect--whether
it be the stirring whirls of northern tempests, the rural peace of
English glades, or the fineness of rarefied atmosphere in the south,
as in Greek isles and sea. Whichever mood of nature appeals to a true
artist and inspires in him the sacred fire, and consequently the
expression in his touch, should find a place in the heart of the true
lover of art. Because the aesthetic pores of a music-lover are open to
the rapturous tumult of the wildly whirling Schumann symphony in A
minor, is he, therefore, incapable of being entranced by the rare
refinement of Palestrina's cameo-like phrases? Because he feels a
rapturous excitement as the curtain falls at the end of the first act
of "Lohengrin," can he not also feel a soul-satisfaction in the
elevated serenity of Bach's "Christmas Oratorio"? Does it not rather
denote a want of elasticity in the aesthetic perceptions, a want of
flexibility in the sensibilities flavouring somewhat of the
Philistine, to be touched by a limited range of emotions? Because
Leighton is not Whistler, or Watts is not Sargent, why must the one be
admired at the expense of the other? With Leighton's rare intellectual
acumen he knew well that these limitations in viewing various outlooks
on art arose chiefly from a want of wide culture and experience. In
the great galleries of Europe, among the treasures in the churches of
Italy, his own vision had been enlarged, and he had felt how
nourishing to his own best instincts such enlargement had proved.
Hence his earnest endeavours when first entering the Academy to
establish the Winter Exhibitions of Old Masters, and later, when
President, to give as many facilities as possible for students to
travel abroad. Probably, it never will be fully realised how greatly
Leighton's initiations in starting new ventures for young students and
artists have helped the real progress of English art. His great
modesty and rare tact prevented this initiation from being fully
appreciated even at the time. When such an one as Leighton is working
on great lines, the last thing he thinks of is, Who is really
achieving the work? The aim has to be accomplished; it matters little
who is used as the tool to achieve the work. The real satisfaction to
such a nature is the fact that the work _has_ been achieved.
Perhaps of all the ways in which Leighton helped to forward the
condition of art in England, the most valuable was his industry in
searching out unknown work, discovering what merit existed in it,
hunting up the artist, and, by becoming personally acquainted with
him, encouraging in every manner his onward progress. What he effected
in Mason's case with such a rich harvest to the world as the result,
he did in many other cases when the artist was a perfect stranger to
him. Mr. Alfred East, the President of the Royal Society of British
Artists, writes: "Lord Leighton was a man of broad sympathies in his
appreciation of Art, an earnest worker with a lofty purpose and a high
ideal. He liked to see these qualities in others, and spoke of the
dignity and privilege of being an artist, and lived up to it in his
own house. To those who knew him well he was singularly modest about
his work, soliciting criticism with a frankness which was as
unaffected as it was sincere. He never posed, but was a fellow-worker
and a comrade. Such were the characteristics of the artist at home. I
owe more to his encouragement than to any other influence of my life.
Our acquaintanceship grew into friendship; he helped me to speak to
him as I could speak to no other, of my own aims and ideals. This is
the great artist as I knew him."
Singularly chary of accepting favours or putting himself under any
obligation where he did not feel certain he could requite it by any
feeling or action of his own, the response Leighton's nature made when
any person, thing, or place gave him delight was that of a
spontaneous, unstinting gratitude. Never did any one enjoy more fully
the best of blessings--a grateful heart. Moreover, once the tender
spot of pity touched, a self-ignoring energy of helpfulness and desire
to benefit arose, which was at once the most beautiful and the least
fully understood trait in his character. It is difficult for many to
understand a _passion_ for unselfishness. "We bear with
resignation the sorrows of others," is one of the good sayings of
Walter Bagehot. No rule without an exception--Leighton did not bear
with resignation the sorrows of his friends, nor of those he pitied as
overweighted and in any need of help which he could give. No better
proof exists of the fineness, the distinction of a nature, or the
reverse, than the effect which misfortune or suffering produces on it.
Pity with Leighton was ever allied with profound respect. He gave help
as one indulging himself in a privilege rather than as one conferring
a benefit. A beautiful story, for which I happen to be the best
authority, is interwoven with the last years of his life.
[Illustration: "MEMORIES." 1883
By permission of Messrs. P. & D. Colnaghi, the owners of the
Copyright]
[Illustration: "THE JEALOUSY OF SIMOETHA, THE SORCERESS." 1887]
[Illustration: "LETTY." 1884
By permission of Mrs. Henry Joachim]
One day, somewhere in the winter of 1879, on opening a gate which
leads from our garden to the Holland Park Studios, I saw standing at
one of the studio doors a figure which I described to Leighton as a
"vision of beauty"--a young girl with a lovely white face, dressed in
deepest black, evidently a model. Needless to say, Leighton, ever
eager to procure good models, obtained her name from the artist to
whom she was sitting when I first saw her, and engaged her as a model
for the head. Shortly after she began to sit to Leighton, he wrote to
me saying the young girl was in sad circumstances, and he would be
very glad if I could help her by making some studies from her. I
agreed, and he arranged with her to give me sittings. She told me that
she had recently lost her mother, her father had deserted his family
of five girls and two boys, and she with her elder brother were left
to support them. She was endeavouring to act the part of mother to her
younger sisters and brother. As Leighton and I grew to know her better
we found her very intelligent and conscientious in acting this part,
and she enlisted our sympathies entirely. She confided to me, while
sitting one day, that she longed greatly to find something to do more
interesting and remunerative than spending her days as a model. She
thought she could act. I consulted Leighton. His first exclamation
was, "_Impossible!_ with _that_ voice! How _could_ she go on the
stage?" I thought the voice, which had a singularly unpleasant Cockney
twang in it, might be trained, as I had observed how very eager she
was to learn to speak in a more educated manner, quite realising her
own shortcomings. Leighton came round to my opinion; and, once having
made up his mind that she was bent on educating herself for the stage,
showed himself as ever the most unselfish and untiring befriender.
Meanwhile four of these beautiful children became useful to him as
models. From the second daughter, who afterwards married an artist,
Leighton painted "Memories," reproduced here; from the third, Hetty,
he painted "Simoetha the Sorceress" and "Farewell"; but it was the
youngest, Lina, quite a small child, who delighted him most, and who
had a rare, refined charm which must have captivated any child-lover.
She took the place of little Connie Gilchrist of the "Cleobouline,"
the "Music Lesson," and other of the earlier paintings, in the later
pictures. She sat for "Sister's Kiss," "The Light of the Harem,"
"Letty," the sleeping group in "Cymon and Iphigenia," "Kittens," in
the friezes "The Dance" and "Music," and "A little girl with golden
hair and pale blue eyes"--
"Yellow and pale as ripened corn
Which Autumn's kiss frees--grain from sheath
Such was her hair, while her eyes beneath,
Showed Spring's faint violets freshly born."
ROBERT BROWNING.
--also the child in "Captive Andromache." Of the sister-mother of this
little family, beautiful as she was, Leighton declared he never could
paint a successful likeness, notwithstanding his attempts in
"Viola,"[75] "Bianca," "Serenely wandering in a trance of sober
thought," and "Miss Dene." Her very beautiful throat, however, was
reproduced worthily in many of his subject-pictures, and the true
dramatic instinct she undoubtedly possessed enabled her to be of help
in such pictures as "Antigone," "Return of Persephone," and the last
picture, the passionate "Clytie." But however useful she proved as a
model, Leighton never for a moment thought of his own interests before
the serious welfare of the young girl's life. He realised that if she
was to make a successful actress, it involved serious and concentrated
study. One morning I received the following note:--
DEAR MRS. BARRINGTON,--Miss Pullen will be very happy to sit to
you on Monday, and will talk over the rest when you meet. You
are very kind about it all, as is, indeed, your wont.
_P.S._--You see my harassed old head does sometimes remember
what I promise.
[Illustration: STUDIES FROM DOROTHY DENE FOR "CLYTIE." 1895
Leighton House Collection]
And later:--
2 HOLLAND PARK ROAD,
KENSINGTON, W.
DEAR MRS. BARRINGTON,--I want you to help me in a little
conspiracy against (?) our young tragic friend. Mrs. Glyn
frequently urges that she ought, at all events for a time, to
give her _whole_ mind and being to the study of her art. I need
not say I share that opinion, and I have at last, after infinite
trouble and persistence (my _nose_, you know)[76] induced her to
leave off sitting for a _month_, in the hope, if you will all
help, of making it a _quarter_. This would, I am confident, be
of the greatest value to her, giving her time also to read a
little and concentrate her thoughts. I am quite prepared to give
up painting from her for three months; but she is in mortal
dread lest her other friends should think her unkind and
ungrateful for their sympathy. I have told her I believe no such
thing, and that I feel sure that Schmaltz and you (who work most
from her) will, as willingly as I, postpone your studies in
order to aid her in so important a matter. She is going to call
on you to-day; if you agree with me, _be very firm_--have a
_nose_! _Refuse_ to paint from her for three months.
We succeeded in making the little girl work exclusively at her acting,
and Leighton, Watts, and I frequently visited the school where she was
being trained under Mrs. Glyn, to hear her and her fellow-students
perform the pieces they had studied. Eventually she appeared in London
and in the provinces, and quickly communicated all her successes and
failures to Leighton and to me. Constant notes passed between us as we
each received news from our young _protegee_, or when we thought some
fresh step might be taken for her advantage. For instance, one of
these notes runs as follows:--
DEAR MRS. BARRINGTON,--It has occurred to me that I perhaps
seemed this morning what I certainly did not mean to seem,
churlish in regard to that letter from Irving.[77] _If Miss
Pullen is now ripe for him to hear her_--this is the most
important point (for to go to him _too soon_ would be the most
unwise thing possible in view of her getting a good
engagement)--and if, having declined a letter on a previous
occasion, she has any unnecessary scruple about now asking for
one, it will be quite enough for you to tell me from her that
she wishes for one, and I will at once write it. _Kemp will
always be able to tell you where to get at me._ I can write as
easily from Vienna or Constantinople as from here.
From Exeter Dorothy Dene wrote to Leighton after recounting an
unwonted success:--
"Don't be frightened that I shall let all this praise turn my
head. I know how much better it could be done, and after every
scene a great weight falls on my heart that I have done no
better. But I like you to warn me; it is good for me, so don't
leave off, please. I am sorry that your friend, Lord
Mount-Edgcumbe, will not see me, and that you had the bother of
writing for nothing. Please do not fash yourself about finding
out any one else. I must leave off now, as it is time to go to
the theatre, and you will not get this any sooner if it were
posted to-night than to-morrow.
_Sunday, 24th._
"To continue, our lodgings are very comfortable, and nearly
opposite the theatre; the food is good, and very fairly cooked,
but I am very pleased with the tuck parcel; we had one of the
birds when we arrived, the other things we have hardly touched.
I thought it better to save them for places where the food may
be bad. Please send me Mr. B. Tree's letter. I thought as you
think about its advice. Thank you so much for _your_ kind advice
and gentle reminders, I shall try so hard to remember all you
have said to me at different times; and if I do become anything
in the future, I shall owe all the best part of it to you."
An engagement for two matinees was made for her debut in London.
"Dear Mrs. Barrington, 'Dorothy' acts at the _Globe_ on Monday and
Tuesday afternoons," wrote Leighton; "I mean to go on Monday." I took
a party of eight to see her, including the late Lord Lytton, who took
much interest in the stage. After the performance Leighton wrote to
me, "Poor Dorothy was paralysed with terror yesterday--but I hope
intelligent people will have seen _through_ that." Again, later, "she
is adding, as she deserves, to the number of her friends, several of
whom treat her with really maternal kindness." I can indeed very truly
endorse Leighton's good opinion. Dorothy and three of her sisters were
worthy of all the interest shown in them. They were entirely
self-respecting, conscientious children, most affectionately devoted
to one another, and striving their utmost to improve in every sense,
and make themselves worthy of the help they received. Naturally they
adored their chief benefactor, Leighton. Unfortunately, Dorothy,
notwithstanding dramatic gifts, great perseverance and intelligence,
lacked charm on the stage. Her very beautiful face and throat were not
seen to advantage, as they were hardly in proportion with her figure,
which was short and too stiffly set to move gracefully on the stage.
Leighton in fun always called her "the little tee-to-tum," or when she
wore a large hat, "the mushroom." As he felt vitality waning and
mental effort a greater strain, the little family of Pullens had to
Leighton somewhat the same resting charm that Italy had in early days,
when he turned from the German austerity in study to the relaxation of
the _dolce far niente_ of Italian national life. "I go to see them,"
he used to say, "when I want to let my back hair down and get off the
stilts." When Leighton was dying, his sister, Mrs. Sutherland Orr,
took Dorothy into his room. He was too ill to speak, but only smiled
to her in answer to her saying, "If I have or ever will do anything
worth doing, I owe it all to you--everything I owe to you." It is
almost unnecessary, as it is distasteful, to mention that this
beautiful paternal attitude Leighton displayed towards these orphans
was made the subject of ugly gossip--for are there not always the
_miserables_ of the world who seek the ugly rather than the beautiful?
misinterpreting the beautiful so that it should come within the range
of their scandalous arrows, more especially when the darts attack a
man in the high position Leighton held. Some of these offshoots of
envy and jealousy came within earshot of Leighton's sisters, who
thought it well to warn him in a letter that such malice was in the
air. He wrote a lengthy answer, ending with the following sentence:
"But let me turn away from the whole thing, it has pained me more than
enough. I implore you not to reopen it. On the only thing that
matters, you are _absolutely assured, if you believe in my honour_. If
you hear these rumours again, meet them with a flat, ungarnished
denial. Let that suffice--it does for me." To a lady friend he wrote
still more explicitly, in order, as he said, that there should exist
in his own handwriting an implicit and unmitigated denial of the
malicious falsehood. Leighton never knew under whose auspices this
scandal was conducted. As is the case invariably, it was impossible to
put the finger exactly on the culprit--for these fulsome things have
to be propagated under the rose, in order that they should get a firm
root before an authoritative denial can be given. However, after
Leighton's death, the lie was stated more boldly--even directly to his
two sisters. It is necessary, therefore, to include in the account of
his life the full and truthful version of the kind and fatherly
protection Leighton gave to this family.
The interests of the Kyrle Society were another cause which I had in
common with Leighton. He spoke at the first public meeting that was
held in the Kensington Town Hall on January 27, 1881, and I possess an
interesting correspondence with him on the subject, which space will
not allow me to quote. The important matter contained in it appears in
the following correspondence between Mr. T.C. Horsfall, the chief
mover in establishing the Art Museum and Galleries in Manchester, and
Leighton, together with a discussion on other vital points connected
with Art:--
_April 7, about 1880._
DEAR SIR,--I am probably too late to be of any use, but have
nevertheless much pleasure in assuring you once again of the
sympathy with which I view your endeavours to bring the refining
influences of Art in all its forms, and, so to speak, in
co-operation on the masses in the vast industrial centre from
which you write. I believe that in seeking to elicit and to
cultivate their sense of what is beautiful you are opening up to
them a deep source of enjoyment, and by opposing good to bad
influences, rendering them great and lasting service.--Yours
very faithfully,
FRED LEIGHTON.
* * * * *
_February 17, 1881._
I have carefully read over the programme of your enterprise, and
there is much in it with which I can warmly sympathise. I desire
nothing more deeply than to see the love and knowledge of Art
penetrate into the masses of the people in this country--there
is no end which I would more willingly serve; but there is in
your programme a paragraph which I cannot too emphatically
repudiate--that, namely, which excludes from Art, as far as the
public is concerned, that which is the root of the finest Art as
Art, the human form, the noblest of visible things. That you
should sternly and stringently exclude all work which reveals
an offensive aim or prurient mind is what I should be the
first to claim, but that you should lay down as a corner-stone
of your scheme an enactment which would exclude by implication
more than half the loftiest work we owe to Art--_nearly all
Michael Angelo_, much of Raphael's best, Sebastiano del Piomba's
"Raising of Lazarus," Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne,"
Botticelli's "Birth of Venus"--this is indeed a measure from
which I must most distinctly dissociate myself, and which makes
it impossible for me to connect my name with an enterprise which
would else command my sympathy.
[Illustration: STUDY IN COLOUR FOR "GREEK GIRLS PLAYING AT
BALL." 1889
By permission of Mrs. Stewart Hodgson]
_From the "Manchester Courier," August 30, 1890._
SIR FREDERIC LEIGHTON ON THE MANAGEMENT OF ART GALLERIES.
To the Editor of the _Manchester Courier_.
SIR,--On the 4th and 6th inst. I published two long letters on
the management of art galleries, of some part of which this is a
summary:--No one can intelligently and fully enjoy any picture
or statue unless he has some measure of three kinds of
knowledge. (1) He must know something about the subject
represented, or he cannot enjoy the expression by the work of
the artist's feeling and thought; (2) he must know something of
the processes of the art in which the artist has worked, or he
cannot know what effects the artist sought or might have sought;
(3) he must know something of the history of the art, or he
cannot understand what elements in the work are due to the
artist himself and what to his time and place; or enjoy at all
some of the finest works ever produced. For the giving of the
second and third of these three kinds of knowledge there ought
to be subsidiary collections in our Manchester galleries, kept
distinct from the principal collection, and for the giving of
the first kind there ought to be several distinct subsidiary
collections, of which some should be for the purpose of giving
knowledge of flowers, birds, trees, and the other beautiful
objects which are "elements of landscape." As a very large
proportion of the people of all large towns are ignorant of all
that is interesting in nature, and of all that is noblest and
most interesting in history and in contemporary life, and as
pictures can very effectively give some knowledge both of nature
and of the deeds of men while fulfilling their special function,
which is to give certain kinds of aesthetic pleasure, the
principal collections in our galleries ought to be used for the
purpose of giving knowledge of nature and of noble human nature.
A gallery of good pictures of the kind would, by reason of the
interest of the subjects represented, attract so much attention
that the public would to a far larger extent than now feel the
influence of the artistic qualities of pictures. In order to
obtain pictures of suitable subjects, the directors of art
galleries, instead of only buying pictures in exhibitions and
studios as they now do, should, as a rule, revert to the custom
which prevailed in the ages when art influenced life deeply, and
should ask artists to paint pictures of prescribed subjects. I
believe that they would get thus better pictures and at lower
prices. Many artists certainly would be at their best when they
knew they were working to enlighten a great community, and would
gladly accept a moderate price for a picture ordered for a
public gallery.
I sent a copy of my letters to Sir Frederic Leighton, and asked
him if he would let me have his opinion respecting the principal
suggestions contained in them. With the great kindness which
distinguishes him, Sir Frederic Leighton has written me the
following letter, which contains advice so valuable that I am
sure every person in Manchester who cares for art will be glad
to have an opportunity of reading it:--
"DEAR MR. HORSFALL,--I must apologise for my very long
delay in answering your letter--a delay due in great part
to lack of time, but in part also to the fact that your
questions could not be answered hastily, or without due
consideration. I may say at the outset that I very warmly
appreciate the depth of your interest in the subject of
art, and the constancy of your efforts to spread its
influence in Manchester; and I am glad to be able to add
that on not a few points, I find myself in harmony with
your views.
"It is evidently not possible for me to touch, within the
compass of a letter, upon more than one or two of the
matters with which you deal in your two long communications
to the Manchester press; and, indeed, the question on which
you mainly dilate, and in regard to which I am not wholly at
one with you, would require to be dealt with at far greater
length than is possible to me here. I must content myself
with saying what little seems to me sufficient to indicate
the grounds of my dissent from you. But first I should like
to say a word in passing on the vexed subject of _copies_.
"There can be no doubt that it would be an immense advantage
to those who cannot travel--that is to say, to the enormous
majority of men--to bring before their eyes, through
reproductions--if these reproductions were absolutely
faithful--the masterpieces to which distance deprives them
of access. This is, in the case of sculpture and
architectural detail, in a large measure achieved by the
means of plaster casts, though it is needless to point out
that the capacity of the material robs the reproduction of
much of the life and light of the original. With pictures
the case is different. The subtle and infinite charm which
resides in the _handiwork_ of a master, and in the absence
of which half the personality of his work is lost, can
hardly ever be rendered by a copyist. For this reason the
overwhelming majority of even reasonable copies is to my
mind worse than useless. Such copies can kindle no
enthusiasm, and they virtually misinform the student. It has
always seemed to me that the best way to acquaint young
people with pictures which they are not able to see is to
put before them photographs of the originals, which, besides
giving design, form, and light and shade, with absolute
fidelity, render, in a wonderful way, the executive
physiognomy of the work; and by the side of these
photographs free, but faithful, coloured sketches of the
pictures should hang, giving the scheme, harmony, and tone
of the colour, but not, like finished copies, professing an
identity with the original, which is never achieved.
"Turning now to what you say on the subject of the
acquisition of works for a public gallery, I should at once
dissuade you from any idea of giving definite commissions--I
mean commission to paint specially selected subjects. I have
always felt very strongly that artistic work, to be of real
value, must be the outcome of entirely spontaneous impulse
in an artist. I believe that in the immense majority of
cases work done under any other conditions lacks vitality
and sincerity, and will not show the worker at his best. A
subject which does not impose itself unbidden on the artist
will never elicit his full powers. I have myself on that
ground for many years past invariably declined to paint
under any kind of restriction.
"Neither does your idea of--practically--refusing
encouragement to any work which does not commemorate a noble
deed, and, if possible, the noble deed of a well-known
personage, commend itself to me. It seems to me, on the
contrary, to be a harmful one, inasmuch as it misdirects the
mind of a people, already little open to pure artistic
emotion, as to the special function of Art. This can, of
course, only be the doing of something which it _alone_ can
achieve. Now, direct ethical teaching is specially the
province of the written and the spoken word. A page or two
from the pen of a great and nobly-inspired moralist--a
Newman, say, or a Liddon, or a Martineau--can fire us more
potently and definitely for good than a whole gallery of
paintings. This does not, of course, mean that a moral
lesson may not indirectly be conveyed by a work of art, and
thereby enhance its purely moral value. _But it cannot be
the highest function of any form of expression to convey
that which can be more forcibly, more clearly, and more
certainly brought home through another channel._ You may no
more make this direct _explicit_ ethical teaching a test of
worth in a painted work than you may do so in the case of
instrumental music; indeed by doing so you will turn the
attention of those before whom you place it from the true
character of its excellence--you will, so to speak,
mis-focus their emotional sensibility. It is only by
concentrating his attention on essentially artistic
attributes that you can hope to intensify in the spectator
that perception of what is beautiful in the highest, widest,
and fullest sense of the word, through which he may enrich
his life by the multiplication of precious moments akin to
those which the noblest and most entrancing music may bestow
on him through different forms of aesthetic emotion. It is in
the power to lift us out of ourselves into regions of such
pure and penetrating enjoyment that the privilege and
greatness of art reside. If, in a fine painting, a further
wholly human source of emotion is present, and if that
emotion is more vividly kindled in the spectator by the fact
that he is attuned to receive it by the excitement of
aesthetic perception through the beauty of the work of art as
such, that work will gain no doubt in interest and in width
of appeal. But it will not therefore be of a loftier order
than a great work in architecture or music--than the
Parthenon, for instance, or a symphony of Beethoven, neither
of which preaches a direct moral lesson.
"But I am being led away into undue length without the
possibility, after all, of doing more than roughly indicate
the grounds of my dissent from a rather vital article of
your creed--a dissent which will, I am afraid, jar on you in
proportion to the great sincerity with which you hold your
faith. I may say, by the way, that I dwelt at rather greater
length on this very subject in my first presidential address
to the Royal Academy, delivered on 16th December 1879.--And,
herewith, I remain, dear Mr. Horsfall, yours very truly,