A. L. Baldry

“ He never sank into a mere pictorial archæologist, and rarely tried to produce those cold and lifeless reconstructions of ancient life which are too often put forth by painters who depend for their inspiration upon book-learning and museum study rather than imagination. But the beauty of Greek art, its strength and delicacy, its dignity and ideal grace, absorbed him as they did Fred Walker and Albert Moore, and, like these two British masters, he allowed its influence to determine the way in which the whole of his painting was treated. ”

“ Everything which helps to define his personality, or to shape his character, has an actual bearing upon his ultimate efficiency as a producer, and counts for something in the building up of his scheme of active existence; the discipline of a judicious up-bringing puts his temperament under the control of his intelligence, and by pointing the way in which he can best apply his powers, saves him from wasting his energies in unprofitable experiment. He starts his career with a knowledge of himself, and with confidence in his personal qualifications for the profession he has chosen ”

“ That he had the sculptor's habit of mind is proved by many of his studies in which he drew a figure, or group of figures, from three or four points of view, so as to arrive at what may be called the anatomy of the pose.
But discussions as to his right to be described as a sculptor who chose to give himself up to painting, or as a painter who had all the qualifications to become a master of sculpture, are a little futile. He was a great artist and he proved his powers in both forms of practice. ”

“ This belief, formed in his early manhood, persisted, indeed, in all its essentials to the end of his days, and was as surely evidenced in his later classicism as in the first few examples of his Italian adaptations.
It was founded upon the idea that a work of art to be really great must be rightly decorative, that whatever the pictorial motive chosen, it must be treated as the basis of a studied arrangement of form and colour, and must be brought as near to perfection of design as is possible by the exercise of all the devices of craftsmanship. ”

“ It is characteristic of his courage that he should have chosen to make in this manner his first appearance in an English exhibition; a man of less independence would probably have hesitated to stake so much upon a piece of work which, by the very frankness of its revelation of the artist's intention to go his own way, was quite as likely to excite opposition as to be received with approval. But it was no part of his scheme of existence to tout for popularity by coming down to a lower level, and he valued consistency more than the adulation of the public. ”

“ As an anatomical study it is most convincing, for it reveals an astonishingly complete knowledge of the construction of the human form, and is exceedingly true in its realisation of muscular action. Perhaps the chief objection that can be urged against it as a work of art is that it records an impossibility—a snake of the size represented would be more than a match for a man even with the fine physique of the athlete, and the ending of such a struggle, the difficulty of which the statue hardly suggests, would be prompt and disastrous. ”

“ Leighton, like G. F. Watts, did not attach much importance to that ready directness of handling which is so greatly advocated by men of the modern school; the finish and elaboration of surface which he desired were not to be obtained by treating his picture as if it were to be no more than a brilliant sketch. He aimed at exhaustive accuracy of drawing, exact correctness of modelling, the perfecting of every detail, and the equal completion of all the parts of his canvas; and this manner of working led necessarily to sacrifice of spontaneity of touch. ”

“ To most people it would seem incredible that such a career could be spoken of as anything but a success, or that an artist so respected and so honoured should not be counted among the very few to whom fate has been consistently kind. And yet to say that Leighton died a disappointed man would not be untrue. ”

“ If an attempt were made to explain in a few words Leighton's position in art, it would probably be most correct to say that he was, by instinct and habit of mind, more a sculptor than a painter. He looked at nature with a sculptor's eye, and he adopted a kind of technical process which in its progressive building up was closely akin to modelling. ”

“ It is true that a definite connection can almost always be traced between the temperament of an artist and the work that he produces. One of the first things that must be taken into account in any study of his achievement is the manner of his training during the most impressionable years of his boyhood. ”

“ That it has faults in draughtsmanship, and that in certain details its composition is open to criticism, can be frankly admitted; these defects, however, are but what might have been expected in so ambitious an effort by an artist whose years did not number more than four-and-twenty, and who necessarily lacked that comprehensive grasp of executive processes which comes only with long experience and exhaustive practice in the mechanism of painting. ”

“ A scene from mediæval Italian life, it is handled with something of his earlier manner, but with an amount of breadth and freshness which he scarcely approached in his younger days. It has infinite grace without a hint of weakness, firmness without formality, and style without conventionality; and it is, above all, a true decoration erring neither in the direction of excessive pictorial effect, nor in that of dull unreality. "The Arts of Peace" is less masculine and more studied, and is neither so ingenious in design, nor so happy in its grouping ”

“ Their final decision on the subject was postponed for some years longer, for they felt the need for caution lest his powers should prove to be insufficient to justify them in consenting that he should become a professional artist. But meanwhile his father, himself a man of culture and a lover of the classics, determined that the boy should receive a good general education, and that, though art teaching was not to be denied to him, it should be one only of the subjects in which he was to be trained. ”

“ He was absorbed always in the pursuit of beauty, which he had sought and found in many lands, and it was his earnest desire to give to his representations of this beauty a kind of unhuman perfection, passionless, perhaps, and cold, but exquisite always in its studied refinement. ”

“ Leighton undoubtedly saw in decoration the only permissible application of painting, but he saw also that decoration could be made much more than a narrow and unreal convention, and that so far from hampering the artist with high ideals, it offered him the greatest opportunities of satisfying his aspirations. ”

“ On the death of Sir Francis Grant, who had held the Presidential office since 1866, Leighton was chosen, on November 13, 1878, to fill the vacant post. In making this selection, the members of the Academy did honour to a man who had raised himself, by sheer strength of personality, to a position of acknowledged leadership in the art affairs of this country, but they also secured as their President an artist who was almost ideally fitted to deal with the many responsibilities which have necessarily to be incurred by the head of such an institution. ”

“ His method was his own, and, being his own, he used to say that it was the only one which it was right for him to use, though for a man with other purposes in art, and another kind of temperament, it would probably be entirely wrong. ”

“ It was in Florence that the question whether he was or was not to be an artist was finally decided. His father sought the advice of Hiram Powers, the American sculptor, to whom he showed examples of the boy's work and asked whether he should "make him an artist." When Powers declared that Nature had done that already, and, in answer to further questioning as to young Leighton's chances of success, said that he would become as eminent as he pleased, the parental doubts and hesitation came to an end. ”

“ But during this period his art work was carried on without the systematic direction of any master, and though on his travels he had picked up much useful knowledge, and had acquired sufficient confidence in himself to attempt two or three pictures of some importance, he felt at last the need for real discipline. So at the end of 1849 he left Paris, and returned to Frankfort to put himself under the rigid rule of Steinle, a master from whom he knew that he would receive just the drilling which was necessary to bring his somewhat errant youthful fancies under proper control. ”

“ Steinle was an artist who had little sympathy with those redundancies of style which were at that time characteristic of the Florentine school. He was a believer in severity of manner, in formality and strict simplicity, and that Leighton should have chosen him as the one man from whom he desired to receive tuition is proof enough that the young artist was fully conscious of the deficiencies in his own early performance. With this consciousness to spur him on it can well be imagined that the two years he spent with Steinle were not wasted ”

“ But Leighton's fine craftsmanship has made even an impossibility seem credible, and his work must not be condemned because it involves an error in natural history.
He exhibited another large statue, "The Sluggard," in 1886, which, like the "Athlete Struggling with a Python," has found a permanent home in the Tate Gallery. It is again a study of action which, if less violent than that of the earlier figure, is still vigorous enough to show how well the artist understood anatomy; and it is again Italian rather than Greek. ”

“ He had a sound basis of book-knowledge, and was taught especially to study and understand the classics, but to this was added, by his prolonged residence abroad, an intimate insight into many things which never come within the view of the majority of men, or at best are only dealt with in later life when the receptivity of youth has become dulled. ”

“ In this picture—"Cimabue's Madonna carried in Procession through the Streets of Florence"—he not only summarised all his previous experience, but forecasted what was to be his artistic direction during the rest of his life. Though he had painted other canvases before, and exhibited them at Frankfort, it was with this one that his career as an artist of admitted distinction really began. It introduced him dramatically to the British public ”

“ Youthful associations and surroundings must obviously have a very real influence upon the direction in which any man develops in after life, and much of his later success or failure must depend upon the kind of cultivation that is given at the outset to his natural tastes and instinctive preferences. ”

“ But of course when he came to build a system of art practice upon his early experiences, and to shape it by the aid of his analytical habit, he evolved something which most men could scarcely appraise at its full value. ”

“ Activity and the capacity for strong exertion are evident in every line, and his condition is too good to have been obtained without exercises which the sleepy, sluggish man would not have cared to perform. ”

“ Life in London did not, however, mean that his excursions to other countries were to be abandoned, he continued regularly to spend some months in each year in travel abroad, and he visited in succession Spain, Damascus, Egypt, and other parts of the East, besides renewing his acquaintance with many places which he had seen before. ”

“ It would not be easy to find a better instance of this connection between the artist's personality and the character of his performance than is afforded by the life and practice of Lord Leighton, nor one which marks more definitely the effect produced by early associations and training. ”

“ He had made a previous experiment in this direction in 1866, when he executed the fresco of "The Wise and Foolish Virgins" in the church at Lyndhurst, an admirable composition treated with rare intelligence and distinctive originality; but the South Kensington lunettes were more exacting undertakings, and calculated to test his powers to the utmost. "The Arts of War" was begun towards the end of the 'seventies and took several months to finish, the companion lunette was painted two or three years later ”

“ A typical example of the artist's earlier manner—characteristically suave in line arrangement and dignified in effect—this picture shows well how he could manage the intricacies of an elaborate composition. The decorative beauty of the whole design and the grace of individual figures can be sincerely admired.
PLATE II.—THE SYRACUSAN BRIDE
Leighton does not seem to have owed to heredity any of his particular gifts as an artist. ”