Frederic Leighton

“ Painting
It is many years since, as my wife and I were leaving the Savoy Theatre at the close of an afternoon performance of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, we were shocked by a newsboy shouting "Death of Lord Leighton." We made Frederic Leighton's acquaintance in the green-room of our theatre. Soon afterwards we dined at his beautiful house in Kensington. In its neighbourhood there was a nest of his comrades in art, including Val Prinsep, Luke Fildes and Marcus Stone. We were friends for years: he did me the honour to propose me at the Athenæum, but did not live to see me elected. ”

“ Leighton was an artist of that true type in whom no influence whatsoever can deter or slacken incessant zeal for work. In the deepest recesses of his nature burnt the unquenchable fire, the paramount longing to follow in Nature's footsteps, and to create things of beauty. Among the many loyal servants who have dutifully worshipped at the shrine of art, never was there one who more completely devoted the best that was in him to her service.
"Va! your human talk and doings are a tame jest; the only passionate life is in form and colour." ”

“ Life's work well done,
Life's Crown well won,
Now comes rest."
Then follow the words, "A mark of sincere and affectionate regard, esteem, and admiration for a great artist and much beloved friend, from Alexandra and Albert Edward." At the head of the card were the words, "To Sir Frederic Leighton." [337] There was also a wreath from the Empress Frederick, bearing the words: "From Victoria, Empress Frederick," in the Empress's own writing. ”

“ This visit to Capri produced the famous drawing of the Lemon Tree. [11] Mr. Ruskin wrote: "Two perfect early drawings are of 'A Lemon Tree' and of a 'Byzantine Well'" (see List of Illustrations) , "which determine for you without appeal the question respecting necessity of delineation as the first skill of a painter. Of all our present masters, Sir Frederic Leighton delights most in softly-blended colours, and his ideal of beauty is more nearly that of Correggio than any since Correggio's time. ”

“ Briton Rivière's words—which was the keynote of all Leighton's actions, was impelled in the first instance by a feeling of gratitude for the joy with which beauty in nature and art had steeped his being from a child; a deep well of happiness, a constant companion, ever springing up in his heart, which he craved that others should share with him. This happiness gave sweetness to his life, lovableness to his character, irresistible power to his control. Leighton's was truly a life of praise and gratitude for the joys nature had bestowed on him. ”

“ The accounts that Leighton gives of his ecstasies in the presence of beautiful scenes, enforce the belief entertained by those who knew him best, that it was the power which beauty exercised over him that developed his exceptional strength in all artistic directions. What force in the over-riding of difficulties does not passion give to the lover! No less a force was engendered in Leighton by the inspiration of the beauty of nature. ”

“ Family annals record the delight with which Leighton, the boy of ten, enjoyed the beauty of nature in Switzerland, the flowers and everything he saw in the land of mountains. When he reached Rome, the buildings, the fountains, the ruins, the models awaiting hire on the Piazza di Spagna, fascinated him, and he filled many sketch-books with records of all the picturesque scenes that struck him as so new and wonderful. From earliest days, drawing was Leighton's greatest amusement, and he had it always in his own mind that he would be an artist and nothing else. ”

“ Surely no artist ever existed who evaded being comfortably fitted into either a square or a round hole more completely than did Leighton. Every serious work he undertook was an entirely separate performance from any previous invention—a new venture throughout—and, once decided on, carried through with absolute conformity to the original conception. Therefore any classification, beyond his mere method of working, is more sterile in producing a just estimate of Leighton's art than of those workers who are in the habit of painting pictures in which the same motive recurs. ”

“ And when Leighton started, at the age of twenty-one, to begin his independent life, we feel that it is with the actual that he grappled—the actual in his sensations, his feelings, his impressions, his conditions. An unmistakable note of reality rings through his description of all these. He has no tendency, even unconsciously, when under the glamour of the most entrancing impressions, to colour the picture other than he actually saw it. In the strength of his own real nature he goes forth on the journey of life.
[61]
DIARY Innsbruck, August 18, 1852. ”

“ To Leighton the simple joyous child of nature, in the form of the unsophisticated Italian, was a preferable being. To the end of his life he retained much of the child in his own nature, and had ever an inborn sympathy with the love for children so evident everywhere in unspoilt Italy; for the gracious caressing of them by the poorest of the poor—old men in the veriest tatters and rags showing a complete and beautiful submission to the dominating charms of babyhood. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was only when, as a boy of twelve, he viewed art as the serious work of his future life, and when this view was met by the authorities as one not to be encouraged, that the strong passion of his nature asserted its rights. Clearly in opposition are planted the firmest roots of those inevitable developments which make the great of the world great. In Leighton was nurtured that sense of responsibility towards his vocation, so salient a characteristic throughout his career, partly by his father's attitude towards the worship of his nature for beauty and for her exponent art. ”

“ When Watts wished it recorded that Leighton's nature was the most beautiful he had ever known, he referred, I think, more specially to that lovable, kind-hearted ingenuousness and noble simplicity which were its deepest roots, notwithstanding a life of conflicts, ambitions, and unparalleled success. There are among those who most honour and love Leighton's memory, and who felt most keenly his loss, poor and unsuccessful artists and students, of whom the world has never heard, but to whom the great President gave of his very best in advice and sympathy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As a magnet, Italy drew Leighton to her. [6] Under the influence of her radiant beauty, breathing such a life of charm and colour beneath sunlit skies, he felt the sources of happiness in his own nature expand and his powers ripen. In the fertility of her soil, the vitality of her people, the superb quality of her art—fine and gracious in its perfection, and distributed [20] generously throughout the length and breadth of her land—he experienced influences which intensified his emotions and vivified his imagination. ”

“ He who knows how to hear the voice of nature has found the safest guide, and he only is a good master who opens the mind of his pupil to that voice." At the age of twenty-one, Leighton had realised, and was himself pursuing, the only right course in studying any art. By invariably drawing deeply from the fountain in his own nature, he ever remained true and sincere as an artist. ”

“ They not only knew him to be great, but knew why he was great. Undoubtedly [viii] as a draughtsman Leighton was unrivalled; but bearing in mind his English contemporaries—Watts, Millais, Holman Hunt, Rossetti, and Burne-Jones—it is not as a painter that even his truest friends would claim for him his right to the exceptional position he undoubtedly occupied.
What was it that gave Leighton this position? He himself was the very last to claim it as a right. His creed and his practice were ever to fight against the weaknesses of his nature rather than to rejoice in its strength. ”

“ There is nothing slovenly in Nature, there is as surely nothing slovenly in Lord Leighton's art. The gift which in these modern days is perhaps most rare is a sense of style. Leighton's feeling for style was as much a part of his individual and native taste as was his delight in any other quality of beauty in Nature. Indeed what we call style in art is but the reflection of the same quality in Nature herself, the love which adds to the more oblivious facts of Nature a further quality of truth, a completer insight into her. Leighton possessed a sculptor's feeling for form. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Between the years 1863 and 1866 he painted pictures which proved that, as a distinct artificer in painting, he had found himself, and was no longer under the controlling influences of German or Italian Art, though, unfortunately, hints of German methods in the actual manipulation of his brush clung more or less to his painting to the end. From boyhood Leighton's power of designing, his sense of beauty in line and form and of dramatic feeling, his extraordinary facility in drawing with the point, proved his genius as an artist ”

“ Sometimes one missed in his work just the touch of the rugged which would have given more grace by comparison, by contrast. His grace of diction, his oratory, his writing, was sometimes over-refined, and missed its mark by over-elaboration. The very speciality of Leighton was completeness. One has seen pictures in his study only half finished, which had a charm of freshness that vanished as each portion became worked into equal value. ”

“ Nothing could give a better record of two sides of Leighton's nature, often believed to be incompatible, than the contents of the letter from Naples to his sister, with its remarks on Nordau, Nietzsche, and the like, and this beautiful picture recalled by his old friend Costa—Leighton on his knees before a little child. The intellect which could crack the hardest of intellectual nuts was surmounted by lowly reverence for all beauty, most ardently adored when that beauty came to him in its most innocent childlike garb. ”

“ With respect to his power of draughtsmanship and his natural sense of beauty, Leighton knew his place was among the greatest. His appreciation and love of colour were also far keener than those possessed by the average artist. He felt nevertheless that he lacked the inevitable and [213] continuous force which alone gives "enormous power" and ease to the craftsman, when he deals with work on a large scale, and which carries with it the absolutely convincing effect of the world-renowned art of the past. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A third in a manner does not even know what he has done, but he is like a vine which has produced grapes, and seeks for nothing more after it has once produced its proper fruit. As a horse when he has run, a dog when he has tracked the game, a bee when it has made the honey, so a man, when he has done a good act, does not call out for others to come and see, but he goes on to another act, as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in season."
Leighton's work in every direction was complete work, because his mind grasped completely the proportion and aspect of everything he undertook. ”

“ Leighton was far too wise a man to believe in the constant recurrence of inspirations: he knew that the moment when the whole spirit is ready to act is involuntary; he knew that to reach the supremacy of that moment, labour was necessary; that in labour is the foundation of the building for that moment of inspiration. One may question if the first vision in Leighton was very [5] strong—strong as Blake's, strong as many artists whose powers of attainment were much less than Leighton's, but whose vision was clearer at the outset. ”

“ To whatever class in society a man or woman might belong, whether a Royal or a quite humble friend—once a friend, Leighton gave of his very best and worthiest. No time or trouble would he spare in such service; though he was too eager a worker, and felt too keenly a responsibility towards his calling for him to allow any moment of his life to be frittered away by claims which were not in his eyes real or of any serious advantage to others. ”